Dungeon of the Mad Mage

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Mirt’s Undermountain Survival Guide

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You can order The Demonplague, my level 1 – 20 fifth edition adventure, right now!

This has been a busy week, but I have another DMs Guild product to share! From the minds of M.T. Black, Greg Marks, and myself comes Mirt’s Undermountain Survival Guide! If I am being honest, M.T. and Greg did the lion’s share of the work. I wrote one of the races (the nimblewright), but it is an INCREDIBLE product that’s already an Electrum best seller. Here’s the description from DMs Guild:

It takes more than a strong arm and a sharp sword to overcome the dangers of Undermountain. What you need is an expert, someone who has been there before and can advise what resources you will need to survive. Who better to guide you than Mirt, the renowned veteran of Undermountain?

Mirt’s Undermountain Survival Guide provides everything you need to make your expedition a resounding success, including:

  • Five new races: the Giff, Half-ogre, Illithid, Nimblewright, and Sprite.
  • Five new archetypes: the Cavern Domain, Circle of Stone, Wayfarer, Trapsmith, and the Dark Pact.
  • A new class: the Factotum.
  • Twenty-five new spells.
  • Fifty new magic items.
  • New dungeoneering rules.
  • New underground hazards.
  • Porters, guides, and other hirelings.
  • And… Mirt’s Dungeon Delving Tips!

Mirt’s Undermountain Survival Guide is brought to you by these Guild Adepts: M.T. Black, Greg Marks, James Introcaso, Will Doyle, and with Chris Lindsay supplying the voice of Mirt!

Free Preview

Want a free PDF preview of Mirt’s Undermountain Survival Guide? Of course you do! Here is MOST (but not all) of the nimblewright race I worked on and just a handful of the new magic items in a PDF:

Preview of Mirt’s Undermountain Survival Guide

If you like what you’re reading please consider supporting me on Ko-fi, follow me on Twitter, like World Builder Blog on Facebook, check out my podcasts, find my products on the DMs Guild, tell your friends about the blog, and/or leave me a comment and let me know you think. Thanks!

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Grateful for Demons, Burns, and Mad Mages!

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It’s Thanksgiving here in the US and we’re supposed to tell folks what we’re grateful for while stuffing our faces. I’m grateful for my blog readers and for all the cool news I have to share today.

Demonplague in Print and PDF

The Demonplague, a level 1 – 20 D&D adventure I wrote with Johnn Four that was Kickstarted in the beginning of 2018, is now available in PDF and print! I am so proud of this product. You can get previews of the content here and here on this blog, and you can check out the actual play podcast and stream on the Don’t Split the Podcast Network site.

Burn Bryte Available to Roll20 Plus Subscribers

If you’ve been following this blog, then you already know about Burn Bryte, the original science fantasy RPG I created withJim McClure, Kat Kuhl, and Darcy Ross for the Roll20 virtual tabletop. The playtest just opened up to Roll20 Plus subscribers! If you’re on Roll20, grab a group, play our one-shot adventure, and send us some feedback! If you want to learn more about Burn Bryte, behold our weekly livestream with me as GM!

Dungeon of the Mad Mage

Last but not least, I was lucky enough to contribute to another D&D hardcover adventure, Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage. This is now available in stores (virtual and real) everywhere! If you get it, check out the Crystal Labyrinth! That’s where I did most of my work.

If you like what you’re reading please follow me on Twitter, like World Builder Blog on Facebook, check out my podcasts, find my products on the DMs Guild, tell your friends about the blog, and/or leave me a comment and let me know you think. Thanks!

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Invasion from the Planet of Tarrasaques

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You can order The Demonplague, my level 1 – 20 fifth edition adventure, right now!

I’ve got a new DMs Guild product! It’s an adventure for level 20 characters… and it has more than fifty tarrasques! (You read that correctly.) Behold the product description of Invasion from the Planet of Tarrasques!

Invasion from the Planet of Tarrasques is a single-session, over-the-top, gonzo action adventure meant for four to six level 20 characters. The adventure serves as a capstone for Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage, but can be modified for any setting.

What’s more fun than one tarrasque? How about multiple tarrasques stomping across Waterdeep? How about a whole planet full of tarrasques ready to rumble? If that sounds exciting, then Invasion from the Planet of Tarrasques is for you.

Halaster Blackcloak died… but then he came back… with reinforcements…

Adventure Background

Halaster Blackcloak, the Mad Mage of Undermountain, always has a contingency in place. As long as Undermountain remains beneath the city of Waterdeep, Halaster can never truly die within its walls, for the dungeon rebuilds the mage’s body on the rare occasions when adventurers “kill” Halaster.

Halaster realized that if adventurers destroyed all of Undermountain (a nigh impossible feat more difficult than even slaying the mage), he would lose his immortality. To further protect his life, Halaster took some of the rooms and halls of Undermountain and flung them across the multiverse, including other worlds of the Material Plane. With Undermountain spread across existence, the task of permanently killing Halaster is even more difficult.

Unfortunately for the mage, a party adventurers recently killed him in his dungeon beneath the City of Splendors. When Halaster’s body reformed, he found himself in Falx, another world of the Material Plane inhabited entirely by enormous, carnivorous monsters with endless appetites. These scaly bipeds are closely related to the tarrasque, an infamous monstrosity feared across the worlds of the Material Plane. Halaster, now obsessed with punishing the adventurers who killed him, began to hatch a plot. If one tarrasque could level an entire city, what could a planet’s worth of the beings do to Faerûn?

Adventure Overview

This adventure is divided into three chapters.

  • Chapter 1. In “Giff You a Hand” a platoon of giff arrive in a spacefaring vessel and warn the adventurers about a coming invasion of tarrasques. With the clock ticking, the characters have a chance to prepare for the battle by mustering their allies.
  • Chapter 2. In “Battle for Waterdeep” the characters face-off with the invading titans, defend Waterdeep, and fight for their lives.
  • Chapter 3. In “Falx, Ho!” the characters travel through a portal to the planet of Falx to face Halaster and his army of tarrasques atop a stone tower made from pieces of Undermountain.

This product includes…

  • A PDF of the adventure with art
  • A printer friendly version of the adventure
  • Map images that can be used with virtual table tops

Cover Art Shoutout

I commissioned Stacey Allan to make the cover art, which is my favorite for ANY DMs Guild product (though I am biased). Ain’t it rad?

If you like what you’re reading please follow me on Twitter, like World Builder Blog on Facebook, check out my podcasts, find my products on the DMs Guild, tell your friends about the blog, and/or leave me a comment and let me know you think. Thanks!

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How I Got to Write for Dragon Heist and Dungeon of the Mad Mage

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Hey guess what? You can preorder my level 1 – 20 fifth edition adventure right now!

Just a quick update here this week because I am swamped!

If you missed the announcement over the weekend on the Stream of Many Eyes, Wizards of the Coast is releasing two new hardcover D&D adventures this year. I had the fortune to contribute to both Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Here’s a description of both from the D&D website:

Waterdeep: Dragon Heist

A fantastic treasure trove is yours for the taking in this adventure for the world’s greatest roleplaying game.

Famed explorer Volothamp Geddarm needs you to complete a simple quest. Thus begins a mad romp through the wards of Waterdeep as you uncover a villainous plot involving some of the city’s most influential figures.

A grand urban caper awaits you. Pit your skill and bravado against villains the likes of which you’ve never faced before, and let the dragon hunt begin!

Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage

Explore the mega-dungeon of Undermountain in this adventure for the world’s greatest roleplaying game.

In the city of Waterdeep rests a tavern called the Yawning Portal, named after the gaping pit in its common room. At the bottom of this crumbling shaft is a labyrinthine dungeon shunned by all but the most daring adventurers. Known as Undermountain, this dungeon is the domain of the mad wizard Halaster Blackcloak. Long has the Mad Mage dwelt in these forlorn depths, seeding his lair with monsters, traps, and mysteries—to what end is a constant source of speculation and concern.

This adventure picks up where Waterdeep: Dragon Heist leaves off, taking characters of 5th level or higher all the way to 20th level should they explore the entirety of Halaster’s home. Twenty-three levels of Undermountain are detailed herein, along with the subterranean refuge of Skullport. Treasures and secrets abound, but tread with care!

A lot of folks have asked how this gig came to be. Wizard of the Coast reached out in the beginning of 2017 and asked if I had any work on the Dungeon Masters Guild I thought was a good example of my work. How did they know to reach out? Likely because of some of the previous work I had done and my sales numbers on DMs Guild. I sent them two D&D Adventurers’ League adventures I had worked on: A Dish Best Served Cold and Tales of Good & Evil. (Many thanks to Travis Woodall and Shawn Merwin for editing these adventures and everyone who playtested them for making them awesome.)

As they have said before, Wizards of the Coast is using the DMs Guild as a way to look at potential new authors. They plan their releases so far ahead, you’re just hearing about people’s first experiences now, but I’m sure there will be more names from the Guild contributing to official D&D products.

Several weeks went by and then I was offered the chance to contribute to Dragon Heist with James Haeck. Many folks from the D&D team and tons of freelance artists worked on the book as well.

When Dragon Heist wrapped, Wizards of the Coast reached out again, asking me to write a bit for Dungeon of the Mad Mage, which had many awesome freelance contributors already working on the book.

In the coming months, keep your eyes here and your ears on Table Top Babble for me to talk with other collaborators about the process. We can’t say much until the books are released, but I will say that working on official D&D adventures was as awesome and creatively fulfilling as I had hoped. Now I hope you have as much fun playing as we did creating!

If you like what you’re reading please follow me on Twitter, like World Builder Blog on Facebook, check out my podcasts, find my products on the DMs Guild, tell your friends about the blog, and/or leave me a comment and let me know you think. Thanks!

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