Adventure #56 is now out, "The Terrible Salt"! This one is a wilderness adventure set in a massively wide tidal flat. Adventurers will face an unpredictable landscape and a swarm of implacable predators—unless they take to the high ground and learn where the threats are.
Click through to the blog for the full PDF and full-resolution images.
For this one, I was inspired by a long-ago ...
2023-03-28 13:13:40 +0000 UTC View Post
I'm pecking away at an adventure, this one inspired by the incredibly deep beach at Holkham Bay. There, the tide flows in more than a kilometer over a wide, sandy expanse. As a result it comes in very rapidly, forming little ad hoc streams that join up, swell, and continue moving across the sand.
If you're there as the tide is returning, it's surprisingly easy to get cut off and find yourself having to wade back to a dry patch. When I was there in 1997, a warning horn had been installed...
2023-03-17 23:12:29 +0000 UTC View Post
The lost tomb of Sierk the Carver may have passed from memory, but it's nearer than anyone suspected. But be warned, wizards don't die peacefully. Great danger awaits anyone who arrives at the hour of death.
It's been a long, long time since my last adventure—thank you everyone who has been holding on! At the Hour of Death is a classic dungeon crawl: low-level PCs avoiding...
2022-07-09 16:18:29 +0000 UTC View PostHello all! I'm interrupting my long hiatus to ask for your help with a fundraiser. Friend and onetime Trilemma collaborator Evey Lockhart needs help.
You may know Evey from her weird, queer, and sad publications like Wet Grandpa. Her old school-adjacent publications are irreverent and creative. She's an ENnie silver winner, and tied for first in the 2015 One Page Dungeo...
2022-02-09 14:34:45 +0000 UTC View Post
Thanks for hanging in there, this adventure location has certainly been a long time in the making! This is my take on the classic ogre-haunted bridge, but with a slightly weird take.
Click through to the blog post for the PDF and the full-resolution CC-BY-NC map illustration.
As always, thank you so much for your generous support. Also, shout out to new patrons! Desp...
2021-03-15 02:58:32 +0000 UTC View Post
I haven't been very noisy about it here, but if you missed the news elsewhere, we've just entered the last 48 hours of the Kickstarter campaign for the fourth Trilemma bestiary: Servants of Memory.
This edition stats out the Trilemma Adventures Compendium creatures for the Year Zero Engine, the system underlying for a number o...
2020-08-30 21:40:01 +0000 UTC View PostAs I posted recently, Trilemma has been nominated for four ENnie awards! Voting is now live!
If you're not familiar with th...
2020-07-03 16:18:20 +0000 UTC View PostA very cool thing has happened: Trilemma Adventures Compendium Vol I has been nominated for four ENnie awards! The four categories are:
This is my first time ENnie anything, so I'm pretty psyched about it! The way the ENnies work is that publishers submit products for ...
2020-06-30 03:20:24 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey again! The B/X version of the bestiary for the adventures is now up on DriveThruRPG. Like the 5th edition version, this contains 112 creatures from the adventures, but statted up by Johnstone Metzger for Basic/Expert.
Also, as with the 5e version, as patrons you're entitled to a 2020-06-06 16:56:42 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey everyone! A bunch of behind-the-scenes work has been completed, and the 5th edition bestiary for the adventures is now complete and available on DriveThruRPG.
This is a 182-page PDF, with 112 creatures from the adventures statted out for fifth edition by the incomparable Jen Adcock. Along with the 5e stats, 2020-05-13 11:16:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Three years ago, a Birevian expedition set sail to solve the mystery once and for all: what lies inside the great glass dome of Never Gap? Puila's cog never returned, and the mystery remains.
This month's adventure is a weird one, driven by an image I couldn't get out of my mind: a huge, battered dome of barnacle-encrusted glass, drawing the sea up into it. What could possibly be inside?
To find out, 2020-01-01 07:53:59 +0000 UTC View Post
Just a few pencil sketches as I noodle on the bottle-enclowed island. I don't always work this way, but I often let the visuals lead the way while I work out what's actually there.
2019-12-29 17:33:02 +0000 UTC View Post
High in the village is a village plagued by nighttime poisonings. Victims claim there is a crone who comes creeping in through windows and chimneys to smother and sting them, though none has seen her in the day. If she exists, she is but one part of the sequence of Deel.
And we're back! Nailing the compendium took way longer than I thought, but at long las...
2019-10-31 13:15:01 +0000 UTC View Post
The compendium PDF is now up on DriveThruRPG. If you somehow missed all my posting about it, it contains all 48 adventures published so far, all remastered and re-edited, while some have been expanded or had new illustrations added.
There's also 70 pages of new material:
Man, I can't believe how long it's been! Since the end of the Kickstarter, I've been steadily at work getting the compendium sorted out. There is literally no task that doesn't explode into ten smaller tasks.
The good news is that the PDF is almost done, all 178 pages; just a final few typos to squash and it will be up on DriveThruRPG so it can go out to backers, and up for sale for anyone else who wants a copy. A DTRPG POD hardcover will follow early in the new year, once the hardcover...
2019-09-16 13:16:00 +0000 UTC View Post
We're now in the final 36 hours of the compendium Kickstarter campaign. This is your last chance to sign up for the limited edition hardcover book.
Generous backers ripped through all of the stretch goals I put down, over and over again. We now have only one left: the map pack PDF.
We've unlocked B/X stats, then Dungeon World stats, so now it's time to cue up the big one: 5th edition stats.
Is fifth edition your jam? Do you know a dungeon master who would enjoy these adventures? If so, please help spread the word so we can rip the lid right off this can of...
2019-05-20 13:15:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey all, today's post is a WIP video about drawing the comic for the Grinvolt-Dradkin battle in the underground fortress.
As you surely know by now, as part of the compendium kickstarter campaign I'm running an illustrated play-by-post in the comments of the campaign itself. Every time we hit a stretc...
2019-05-13 13:16:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Well, four days in and the compendium Kickstarter campaign has been a smashing success, far beyond my expectations.
The wait is over, the horn has sounded! Grinvolt axewives are now pouring down the stairs to the Dradkin fortress. Who knows how far they will get, or what awaits them in the darkness?
The Trilemma Adventures Compendium is now live on Kickstarter. I can't tell you how excited I am that this moment is finally here!
Hey everyone! I'm just two days away from launching the Compendium Kickstarter, and I wanted to thank you all for your support over the months and years.
I made my adventures free because I believed that they would be better at marketing than I would be. Your response has been overwhelming.
I'm biased, but I think the compendium will be phenomenal. Every square inch has been laid out again (book margins!), and tweaked for clarity. The formatting i...
2019-04-30 00:26:57 +0000 UTC View Post
As you know, I've been working on a compendium of adventures for.. a good long while now. With your support, I've been redoing all of the old adventures to bring them up to spec for a book. That work is coming to an end.
On May 1, I will throw open the gates at the end of the Sun Temple, revealing the long stair downwards. Every backer of the Kickstarter campaign will represent a doughty warrior of Grinvolt in an assault on the dradkin fortress below.
Every time t...
2019-04-04 18:20:50 +0000 UTC View PostHey all! I've been hard at work getting the compilation ready to kickstart a bit later this year. Oodles of small tasks have crept out of the woodwork (spacer images, supplementary content, indexing the supplementary content, layout for the credits and thank you pages, etc. etc.), but it feels like it's getting under control.
Here's a PDF of the table of contents (which is mostly for interest's sake), but there's also something useful now: an adventure list with short summaries<...
2019-03-01 20:30:01 +0000 UTC View Posthttp://trilemma.com/blog/post_assets/Compilation%20Index%20v0.1.pdf
I've never made an index before, and to my surprise it's strangely calming, pecking through five years' worth of writing to select the useful terms.
This is the result of the very first pass through the adventures. It doesn't include terms from the bestiary or gazetteer entries, and it's pre-edit of an...
2019-02-22 13:24:51 +0000 UTC View Post
In every town, village, and hamlet are women who have seen beyond fear, strong enough to push back winter and bring new life to the lands. Their power comes from beneath an old, stone shrine, half-forgotten by the people of today. What secrets are known to those who dare pass through the mouth of spring?
Click through to the blog post for the liner notes and the full-res caverns m...
2019-02-17 00:23:14 +0000 UTC View Post
All right, the map is done! All that's left is to scan it and clean it up and.. well, write. This is going to be a cavern system under a shrine to 'Spring', something which is referenced in both the Mermaids' knot and Litany in Scratches.
I've been wanting to do another water-filled dungeon that plays with changing water levels.
PS. A reminder to anyone who hasn't set their monthly maximums yet, it looks like I might get two out this month.
2019-01-27 03:42:20 +0000 UTC View Post
Continuing down from the last in-progress picture, these are the lower caverns of spring. I'm having the water drain out of the face in the bottom left. I really like the idea of a dungeon where the water draining out creates different opportunities, depending on the route chosen to descent through it. We'll see how it turns out!
2019-01-25 02:50:58 +0000 UTC View Post
In sudden storms, look for the caravans of The Raindrinkers. They've made their peace with the strange weapons of the Martoi, and from their colorful mud-sleds, call for safety from the skies.
This two-pager is either a wandering encounter, or a mobile settlement, depending on how you look at it.
Click through for the full explanation and the art ...
2019-01-24 05:28:47 +0000 UTC View Post
I felt like busting out the drawing table tonight (instead of drawing digitally), and I'm well on the way with a vertically-oriented map, showing a cavern system under a small stone shrine.
I have some ideas about how this all fits together, but sometimes I prefer to work that out as I draw, doing concept in my head as it comes out. This is one of those times!
The head on the wall is an unplanned callback to the monastery in Litany in Scratches, so I guess I'd b...
This month I'm working with friend and guest writer Tim Groth, who has come up with a really cool clan of people who have made their peace with the strange weapons of the Martoi. More soon!
2019-01-20 03:14:40 +0000 UTC View Post