What’s Coming Next?
I am currently in the works on two projects – Nerzugal’s Trial of Champions and Nerzugal’s Dungeon Master Toolkit 4.
Nerzugal’s Trial of Champions is a concept I was tossing around a while back. It takes a heavy dive into the tactical combat side of D&D and mixes it with a nice hit of randomness to give it replayability. Players are tossed into an arena where they must fight their way through nine rounds of combat that grows increasingly more difficult. Face off against a random set of foes, with a set of random modifiers to make them stronger, and random modifiers that impact the battlefield. Oh the battlefield, also randomly selected for a large list of potential locations. After battle, players choose between two randomly rolled chests and receive the contents – a set of randomly rolled magic items.
Every three rounds, the party levels up, allowing them to go from level 1-3 or up to levels 8-10 for the trials. Every time they level up, they also get to choose a Boon that is randomly rolled from a table of 20 options. Overall, it is meant to be a way for a table that is full of power gamers that may want to try some fun builds to really go all out and have some fun with some crazy encounters along the way!
Almost all of the content is done for this product, but it still needs a lot of editing and some touch-ups of the rules. My biggest challenge has been how to do the maps for this one. I have them all drawn out by hand and have been attempting them to port them into a digital platform, but it is a rough skill to figure out. I may just refine and touch up the hand drawn maps – not really sure! Hoping to have this one out around the end of the year.
Nerzugal’s Dungeon Master Toolkit 4 is still in its infancy. I have a list of ideas written down for adventures, many of which I am very excited about! I think I have a few winners amongst them and am currently writing one called the Stacked Deck that brings back the Efreeti that showed up for the Ij’Namuj adventure in my Game Master Toolkit. I also have some inclusion goals I want to try to hit for this one, bringing in a huge diversity of NPCs to interact with the party.
Some other items for the book I have so far is a Rule of Law dungeon inspired by Baba is You, a beach resort adventure where everything goes wrong, an adventure similar to my Showdown in Skalintown where the party will need to defend the city (but with a big twist!), a murder mystery adventure, a Little Mermaid inspired adventure, and more!
I think it will be 3-5 Adventures, 3-5 Dungeons, 10 Puzzles, and . . . well I am not sure on the rest. Maybe Magic Items again, maybe another Bestiary. We will just have to see where inspiration takes me!
