Pen to Paper...kinda

I do not consider myself to be very creative but I think I am imaginative. It is just the initial spark of creativity that I sometimes have to seek from external sources to get the imagination going. Also, as I pointed out in one of my early posts, my ten years of investment banking has severely eroded what writing ability I managed to develop during my history undergrad degree oh so long ago.

I have been reading with more than a little envy some of the creative contributions various bloggers have been making to the current old school gaming environment. And then a few things happened that managed to not only spark my meager imagination but also make me think that I can work around my grade 4 level writing.

On Scott's old OD&D Wilderlands blog (his current blog is the World of Thool - if you haven't read it, leave here and go there right now) he wrote a couple of posts that really interested me. Using a Frazetta print of the Ghoul Queen Scott developed an interesting idea about the origin of Gnolls. Looking at what Scott had done and the monster sections of the B/X rulebooks, I had the desire to try to make my own, if somewhat limited and derivative, contribution to old school gamers.

Another thing happened to make me think that I could actually do this - Sham on his excellent blog began the development of what became the One-Page Dungeon Template (see Chgowiz's Old Guy Blog for the template). Also see Amityville Mike's Stonehell at for another excellent example. Using the one-page template might actually play more to my current writing style - the four word, three bullet powerpoint slide.

So I am going to attempt to develop a dungeon on this blog using Scott's Xanassa as my inspiration. I am going to keep it small (at least at the start) to keep me from being overwhelmed. I am going to use various resources from around the web to lighten up the workload as well. I am under no delusion that this will be the next great thing, in fact I am planning on it being a very meat-and-potatoes dungeon - baby steps.