For the past few years, I've had a bit of a tradition of creating a small dungeon level from scratch (i.e. making the terrain, painting the mini's, and writing the adventure) throughout the month of January, and releasing one video a week over on YouTube to show how I put it all together.
And, as you've probably guessed, this year has been no different - so, to cut a long story short, here's a list of all the videos that I've made over the course of this month:
- note that you can get the pdf for this level HERE -
And, while these videos usually only deal with the terrain side of things (though I do quickly run through the encounter ideas - but they're fleshed out a bit more in THIS document), this time I've also had a go at making some miniatures for one of the encounters...
- four DIY elementals pictured next to a reaper bones miniature -
...which doesn't really fit with my usual 'print & paste' approach - but I thought I'd include them nonetheless (so here's hoping you like them :) ).
Anyway, now that level 3 is complete, I think that's going to be it for the Dungeon Build Along series (at least for a while). I'll not go into too much detail - but (generally speaking) multi-part videos don't do very well on YouTube... and it's a ton of work to get one video out a week (I really don't know how other folks manage it :S ) - which, when you think about it, doesn't seem like time well spent (i.e. knowing full well that each 'part' is going to be less popular than the last).
Now, that kind of thing doesn't usually bother me too much (chasing the algorithm isn't really my thing) - but this time things started to feel a bit like a chore towards the end (the needless pressure I put on myself to get 5 videos out this month was starting to build up). So, when you combine all of those factors, I think it's time to call the Dungeon Build Along done!
Don't get me wrong though, I'm really happy with it now that it's finished - and I'm looking forward to running level 2 and 3 with my new(ish) IRL group. In fact, I've managed to get the whole thing packed into this one box...
...so it's ready to go if we need a filler game of dungeon crawling one evening :) (we currently play at a friends house - so having something on the shelf that I can just pick up and take with me with little or no warning should be quite handy).
And speaking of 'the whole thing' - here's a picture off all three levels...
...and when you think that all of this fits inside that one small box (which doesn't weigh that much at all), that really does show how the 2.5D style of (cardboard) tiles is great for folks that play away from home (or that don't have much room to store all of this stuff).
But yeah, I hope you've enjoyed the series, and now that it's done I'm looking forward to getting back to the usual kind of content... as there's still a ton of stuff I want to get around to making... and the to-do list keeps on getting longer rather than shorter :D
So, here's hoping that 2024 is going to be a good year on the gaming front... and in my next post I'll be talking about it being a year of 'getting stuff painted' (as I have a massive pile of shame that I need to do something about - so this year I'm also hoping to put a dent in that).
Anyway, if you've got this far, thanks for reading to the end - and, like I say in the last video - if you use any of the ideas from the 'build along' in your own games... it would be great to hear how it goes!
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