Second Shot at a One-Shot

The wizened and dubious kleptomaniac, Azov, collects many things of exceptional value. His demiplanar study—usually sealed—has opened by strange chance (or sabotage). Your adventurers enter his chamber seeking weapons, knowledge, or relics long thought lost.

For the moment, Azov is away. Find the door to Azov's Vault before he returns...

That’s the introduction to my submission for the Appx. N Game Jam, hosted by Dank Dungeons and Jorphdan. Happily, it was featured in the Arcane Library’s latest newsletter! After creating for the Weird Tales Game Jam last year, I had been hoping for another bite-sized opportunity to try my hand at adventure writing, and this event provided just that. The Appx. N Game Jam had a broader audience and many exceptional submissions. I didn’t make the top of the list this time, but I still think Scrolls From Azov’s Shelf turned out stellar.

See the adventure on itch.io ↗

Appx. N Game Jam

Appendix N refers to the snippet written by Gary Gygax in the back of the original 1979 Dungeon Master’s Guide. With the subtitle “Inspirational and Educational Reading,” this list of authors and novels pointed to compelling forces behind D&D’s vision of fantasy and storytelling. Including Robert E. Howard of many Conan stories, Lovecraftian horror, Jack Vance’s sword and sorcery, and Tolkien. I’ve since seen encouragement from TTRPG pundits to establish your own “Appendix N” when writing or running games. In Shadowdark creator Kelsey Dionne’s live stream for the Necromancer class, she referenced the character Sabriel from the Garth Nix novel as one of her own “Appendix N” inspirations. (Her take on the Necromancer turned out quite distinct.)

In this Game Jam, the organizers randomly assigned participants a list of titles that sounded like those of an Appendix N title. The module submitted could take any form that fits in four A5-sized pages (quite compact)! The constraint made it less daunting given my busy schedule, but it is its own challenge. The Jam was a TTRPG system-agnostic jam, and I chose to write with Shadowdark in mind again, though I hoped whatever I created could be adaptable.

Defining Scrolls from Azov’s Shelf

At first, my randomly assigned title did not convey much interest. Fortunately (or unfortunately), work and school prevented me from pouring any considerable time into the jam until the final three days. By that point, I had only the image of a small, simple chamber and an infamous Rasputin-esque sorcerer whose magical scrolls opened doors to many worlds. In fact, I initially envisioned the scrolls to be much like the blue, red, and green books from the hit puzzle computer game Myst and its sequels. Pursuing the threads of some mystery, the books open with a crackling static, revealing windows and portals into wondrous, self-contained worlds. Perhaps Azov was struggling, lost somewhere inside.

I began imagining worlds that could be intriguing, self-contained, and provide threads to draw players toward some meaningful end. While this idea still sounds appealing, it began to seem unachievable given the time and space constraints of the jam. I reminded myself of the 3d6 table I had made for The Last Waltz’s East Hall and another I had seen. Rather than each scroll containing one finely written and enthralling world on its own, those fun elements can be mixed and matched and smashed together by combining different scrolls. Where six scrolls before created six unique realms, six scrolls can now open a door to 120 unique realms!

This felt fun and flavorful, and while the quality of each individual realm is less curated, it allows the GM a little flexibility to draw out that environment for the players. Lovely! But what one-shot premise would send the players into these demiplanes? Why are they rifling through Azov’s Shelf? It’s fun for the GM to see what combinations come up and to challenge the players with them, but to what end?

They must be seeking one of these demiplanes in particular. However, blindly guessing would be quite tedious, so there must be some way to get “closer” to the correct demiplane. That’s when the idea for the Wordle mechanic (you might prefer Mastermind) presented itself:

1. Players try a combination of three scrolls.
2. For each scroll, players receive feedback on whether its usage is correct, close, or unnecessary.
3. Players must face the demiplane before making a new guess.

Mini-Retrospective

Honestly, I was pretty pleased with the core conceit. It truly felt like a perfect combination of a puzzle in an adventure module that isn’t overly heady for typical players and involves regular dungeoneering aspects. Additionally, I included Azov and his Chamber in a way that should be highly adaptable and insertable into an existing campaign. This left gaps for the GM to fill, but strikes me as highly preferable in many instances. It could crop up in a fine townhouse of an exotic metropolis, a high tower overlooking a desert oasis, or an odd shack deep in fey woods.

Polish, polish, polish. I hurriedly put everything together in the last few days before the deadline. I do wish I had had a little more time to clean up and improve small elements before submitting. Conveying the slots and scrolls mechanics succinctly in a few short paragraphs proved challenging, but once the picture was pieced together by readers, it became quite clear. Fellow entrants reviewing my submission provided helpful feedback for rephrasing or tweaking elements that were overly prescriptive or underspecified. I may have been able to make these changes before submitting, but now that the jam is over and the peer rating period is wrapped up, I was able to make a few iterative fine-tunes to specific sections, in addition to cleaning up the Beyond the Door table, which details the possible demiplane combinations.

Other highlights

I spent a considerable amount of time reviewing other submissions to the game jam, but there were simply too many for me to thoroughly examine each one. And many of the top-scoring ones I have yet to see. But allow me to share a few of the ones that stood out to me thus far:

The Knight Errant. The top-ranked submission among the entrants, I truly thought it was stellar in all respects. While I liked the cover art well enough, the quality of the rest of the module outshines it. A knight frozen in time (and ice) keeping an ancient evil contained...

Visions of Lost Lemoria. This submission struck me as a parallel plot that, like my own, could comfortably slot in alongside whatever else your friendly GM has going on at the table. The simple and clean layout is done really well. Incursions from an ancient conflict...

The Indigo Illusionist. If you like looking at purple (or indigo, rather), this might be up your alley. This was the first submission I reviewed that felt really strong, and I absolutely love the way the cover and map are done. Dreams, illusions, or reality...

See all the submissions ↗