Welcome to Random Loot, Loot The Room’s monthly newsletter. You can read previous issues here and support the newsletter on Ko-fi here. Subscribe to get new issues in your inbox!
Let’s not bury the lede here. You already know that this month’s newsletter is going to skew heavily in the direction of Dungeon23. It’s something I’m very excited about (I’ve been writing since Sean first announced it - but more on that in a minute) and it’s basically the biggest thing happening in the circles I move in right now, so it would be silly for me not to talk about it a little. But I’m also aware that it’s everywhere right now, so I’m going to keep that side of things to just the stuff I think you really need to see.
If you have anything you want me to take a look at for this newsletter, feel free to drop an email to chris at loottheroom dot uk. I can’t promise to cover everything, because I want this to be curated and not to just spam links at people, but I do promise to take a look at anything you ask me to look at.
What’s new with me?
The Dungeon Drop finally started shipping, after weeks of frustrations dealing with misprints and lost deliveries (one of which still hasn’t turned up, but I at least have enough copies of that zine to fulfil current orders). The boxed set hasn’t quite sold out yet - I have about 20 copies remaining - so if you wanted to pick one up but didn’t manage to during the pre-orders, you still have a chance!
I wrote some thoughts about my first month of Dungeon23 over on Cohost. I’ve really enjoyed writing a dungeon room a day and I actually think that the dungeon I’m making is some of the best work I’ve done in a long time. I had a chance to run my dungeon very early on in the process and wrote up a play report of it here, and I can’t wait to get it to the table again.
…that’s it, really? December was packed full of freelance deadlines and January is the same, and once they’re polished off my focus is going to be on getting Dice Souls and Down In Yongardy finally completed and shipping. I’ve got plans for an introductory adventure for a dungeon game as well, but I’ll talk more about that when they’re a little more concrete.
What’s good?
Luke Gearing has been doing some really cool stuff with reaction tables. Earlier this week he posted The Toothed Wind and I was genuinely angry about how good it is.
The new edition of Bastards. is available in print at Spear Witch. Bastards. is one of the three games that hugely influenced A Dungeon Game (alongside The Vanilla Game and AD&D 2e), and you should pick it up.
Annabelle Lee is taking subscriber requests throughout January over on Comradery. If you’re in the market for incredible art alongside some short adventures, look no further.
Laurie O’Connel released a very cool pocketmod scenario for Under The Floorboards called A Winter’s Tale. As far as I’m aware this is the first 3rd party release for that game, and it’s really nice to see it getting some love nearly 3 years (!) after I wrote it.
Chris McDowall wrote some thoughts about examples of play. These are something I think about a lot, and I particularly like the idea of showing the GM making mistakes in the example. Lots of food for thought here.
Johnstone Metzger released Dungeon Robbers From Outer Space, a game about alien astronauts raiding old school fantasy dungeons in search of magic items. Johnstone is responsible for some of my favourite monster manual books, and this looks really cool. (Fair warning: that’s a DriveThruRPG affiliate link.)
Adam Vass is running pre-orders for Soul Burner, a Mörk Borg hack set in the world of Necronautilus that looks awesome.
Dungeon23 Stuff
Putting it all in its own section just makes sense, doesn’t it?
Nick Spence posted his first month of work. It’s a very cool dungeon, and the fact that he’s writing for A Dungeon Game fills me with joy.
Sean McCoy wrote a second post about Dungeon23 titled “Slow down, you’re doing fine”. It’s well worth a read if you’re taking part.
Zedeck Siew continues to be a constant inspiration. Each week he posts what he’s working on and each week I am in awe. Seriously.
Dyson is making Dyson’s Delve 2 and streaming his progress. He’s posted a timelapse of the map being drawn over on YouTube and I’m excited to see more from him.
I’m posting my dungeon each week over at Detritus. It’s behind a paywall that starts at £2 a month, but I’m also posting my rooms daily on Twitter with the #dungeon23 tag if you want to see what I’m doing but don’t want to pay for it (which is entirely fair!)
Speaking of Detritus, I also started digging into the text of old editions of D&D to answer the question “what actually is a dungeon?” The first post is available to read for free over here and while some future posts will initially be behind the paywall, they’ll all eventually be made public for free.
That’s everything for this month. Thanks for reading, and I hope you find something you enjoy!