My pitiful entry for the Dungeon of Lost Coppers contest is finally up, here.
Looking at all the other entries, my attempt was hampered by three things for better quality.
- I was under the effects of a confuse spell and thought the deadline for submissions was the same as that for the OSR Superstar contest. I was rushed in my error in the deadline, so I submitted a sub-par map. My only hope of winning is that the winner is picked randomly.
- My printer was on the fritz so I could not print it out and work by hand. I have two scanners and multiple means of taking pictures, so that would not have been an issue.
- I had trouble getting GIMP to cooperate and do what I wanted, so I went with MS-Paint. I was able to cut and past and rotate some lines, but Paint is not the quickest for that.
I started using the random dungeon generating tables in the 1st edition DMG, but ended up with lots of tunnels and small rooms, so I started just making stuff up. Those tables are weighted in such a way as to require a lot of time and input from a DM to get a workable dungeon.
So I learned a lot from this contest. Don’t get the submission date wrong, and don’t rush is you don’t have time or cooperating computer/printer/equipment to do a good job.
