"The Absorbing Eye" - One-Page Dungeon Contest 2024

"The Absorbing Eye"

I submitted an adventure called "The Absorbing Eye" to the 2024 One-Page Dungeon Contest. One of 112 entries. 

The bones of the adventure were developed using the random dungeon generator in the 1e DMG and certain random tables from Shadowdark, so I have Mr. Gygax and Ms. Dionne to thank.

This is my first time submitting anything for publication in any form, so I obsessed a bit about it, wordsmithing, deciding what to cut, what to add. Please read (link above), enjoy and let me know what you think.

Playtest

I got to run the adventure this past weekend, using 5e, with my two kids, a friend and the friend's dad (who plays in my regular S&W game). There is a "goal" to the adventure, in the sense of a main treasure to find, but it could take several sessions. My hope was the faction would play make it interesting even in a one-shot, irrespective of the outcome. In play, I was particularly impressed with a creative use of thunder wave by the wizard, which proved to be clutch. In the end, my players did not find the main treasure, but they did come out with some good loot, though perhaps more suited to a gold-for-XP game. 

I thought it went fairly well, and I got some good feedback from my players. For instance, it would be improved by adding more interesting environmental features, though fortunately, the one room that most of the combat adventure took place in was the one with interesting environmental features!

NPC Negotiations

One notable thing, but not necessarily related to my adventure, was that the party spent far too long negotiating with one particular NPC group (there are many in this dungeon). 

As a DM, I love play the part of an NPC negotiating with the players. There is usually something the players can latch onto if they are smart, persistent or lucky. The kids, however, just aren't used to negotiating with people who might be friends or enemies or both. My son opted for a high Charisma bard, but he had trouble leveraging that with a convincing argument or negotiating position (also, I kept rolling his Persuasion checks in secret and getting low single digits). 

He even expressed surprise that he couldn't just lie to the NPC and have them believe him. They had probed his lie (as they knew about the situation he was lying about) and he made a factual error that allowed the NPC to confirm that it was a lie. No roll needed, of course.  He clammed up for a while, but I think he was starting to grasp it by the end, as he let his character became more active by the end of the negotiations.