Never Mind the StatBlocks,

April 22, 2010 4:19 PM

The One Page Dungeon Contest has selected this year's winners (24mb .pdf).

Emerging from darkling caves where neckbeards dwell, the one-page format is geared for creativity and fast play, shrugging off the accumulated weight of boxed room descriptions, stifling style requirements, trademark characters, railroad plots, and general grunt work. Gaze upon the Laboratory of the Asmodean Techno-Mage, and despair! (Or rejoice, as you see fit.)

posted by fleacircus (22 comments total)

This is great! I love 'Time for Tea.' Secrets!

The difference of styles is nice to see. This makes me think it would be fun to do an exquisite corpse-y game with my group, where each person makes a one-page dungeon, which will be run by someone else...
posted by kaibutsu at 4:51 PM on April 22, 2010

kaibutsu: I love 'Time for Tea.' Secrets!

Same here! That one's really brilliant. I also quite like Central New Jersey After the "Big Whoops."
posted by Kattullus at 5:22 PM on April 22, 2010

These are pretty neat. My style of DMing has pretty much shifted to this style of play anyway. I've grown disenchanted (heh) with the whole game mechanic, really. I hate the tendency of modern gamers to try to powergame, min-max and wish-list from the rules. Nowadays I really tend to downplay stats and rules and go for the storytelling aspect and find I enjoy it a lot more and I think my players do, too.
posted by darkstar at 5:23 PM on April 22, 2010

Awesome. Even though it's been a very long time since I've played an RPG, I still find modules to be really great reading. Maps, stats, descriptions - what more could you need?
posted by ignignokt at 5:59 PM on April 22, 2010

This is the second time today I've been disappointed by a dungeon post.
posted by desjardins at 6:22 PM on April 22, 2010 [5 favorites]

"Oops! (509)
This account's public links are generating too much traffic and have been temporarily disabled!"

Exciting.
posted by delmoi at 7:04 PM on April 22, 2010 [1 favorite]

I knew D&D was getting too popular.
posted by freebird at 7:17 PM on April 22, 2010

This is the second time today I've been disappointed by a dungeon post.

"The half-orc sternly spanks you, because you've been a bad bad naughty dungeon-girl."
posted by orthogonality at 7:20 PM on April 22, 2010

anyone got a mirror?
posted by clockworkjoe at 7:21 PM on April 22, 2010 [1 favorite]

Well, here at least seems to be the 2009 edition in the meantime.
posted by Guy Smiley at 8:07 PM on April 22, 2010

orthogonality: "The half-orc sternly spanks you, because you've been a bad bad naughty dungeon-girl."

wrong orientation there, but thanks for the effort :)
posted by desjardins at 8:13 PM on April 22, 2010

You can see the Winners pdf here in some annoying webdoc format. I had to go full screen to get it to turn pages.
posted by fleacircus at 8:43 PM on April 22, 2010

Slowly working my way through these, jaw dropping a little lower at each one. Thanks for the post, I'm an RPG guy but never would have stumbled upon these in a million years. They're great! It's like a sonnet challenge for PNP RPG writers.
posted by chaff at 9:06 PM on April 22, 2010

is the game to see how frustrated we get trying in vain to open each of the pdfs without success? wtf?
posted by lucysun at 10:34 PM on April 22, 2010

I found another copy of Time for Tea.
posted by Kattullus at 2:22 AM on April 23, 2010

I've got a copy of the pdf on my ramdisk, but I'm leaving town shortly; message me with your email address if you've got a good place to host it.
posted by kaibutsu at 2:54 AM on April 23, 2010

(I like _downloading_ stuff from 4shared, but apparently it's slow as all hell to upload stuff to 4shared...)
posted by kaibutsu at 2:55 AM on April 23, 2010

I've always wanted to try a D&D game or some variant. I don't know anybody who plays nor do I know anybody who'd be interested in playing. Is there a play by email or play by google wave or something?
posted by substrate at 6:04 AM on April 23, 2010

I should recommend these to my friends who just finished a three-year campaign this week and are looking for some fill-in stuff to play while they work out their next game. That is, when the account is re-enabled.
posted by immlass at 7:20 AM on April 23, 2010

substrate YMMV, but the folks at Omegle seem to participate in the kind of RPG stuff you're looking for, at least from time to time.
posted by dylanjames at 9:01 AM on April 23, 2010

@substitute There's a lot of freestyle games (no dice, just prose) on Livejournal. Some of them are really good! Some of them are really bad! They aren't as moderated by a GM as a live, in-person game-- it's more community story-building than a live game-- but it's an interesting way to play, if you can find one with a good group.
posted by NoraReed at 2:59 PM on April 23, 2010

Substrate, rather. That'll teach me to listen to the red squigglies.
posted by NoraReed at 2:59 PM on April 23, 2010