Mad Gaming Madness

So, I was directed to this cool site recently: Tabletop Audio . It's a site with many ten-minute soundscapes to play during games. The site tags them pretty well, as to whether they've got ambience (i.e., rattling chains, water dripping, etc.), minimal music (nothing with voices), or both. The list of soundscapes is pretty extensive, everything from Sleeping Dragon, to Strangers on a Train, to Warehouse 13. I've been trying it out, and it's easier than making my own playlists of sound effects using Softrope , which is what I had been doing. The soundscapes are 10 minutes long, and loopable.

So this year, I had several really good ideas for my One Page Dungeon Contest submission. Sadly, my imagination was captured by the material in the thread " Ten Foot Poles: How Do They Work? " on RPG.net, and especially the idea of the Most Ancient and Worshipful Order of Roodsmen and Pole-Tenders that we developed there. As I was driving one of my DMs home last week, I suddenly had the idea for my submission -- the Vault of the Pole, the testing ground for apprentices of the Guild who seek to become journeymen. I pictured apprentice pole-tenders (called "tenders") frantically trying to overcome the obstacle course in a series of dungeon rooms while a deep sonorous bell tolls every minute or so. And so, that's what I went with.