Keith Baker wrote:Hey all!

There are going to be a number of events at GenCon this year that honor the memory of Gary Gygax. One of these is going to be an ongoing AD&D game, run continuously throughout the convention. The basic concept is "The Tower of Gygax" - a constantly shifting dungeon crafted by the great wizard who taught the gods themselves how to create worlds. This dungeon has no map; instead, it is a mass of rooms, and the DM will randomly select a new room whenever you successfully make it across the room you are in. The goal here is to create an experience that's part Tomb of Horrors and part Killer Breakfast. Players will play in hour-long shifts, and we're scheduling 12 people to a session; the idea is that the mortality rate will be high, people will cycle through the table, and you'll get ribbons to commemorate your achievements whether or not you survive. We want to give people a taste of AD&D, but they don't have to commit a full four hours to it - though if they enjoy it, they can come back again and again.

I'm coordinating the event, but I'd like to have as many people involved as possible; if you have fond memories of AD&D or just want to take a step back in time, I'd love to have you involved. I'm looking for two different things: Room design and DMs.

With room design, the dungeon is going to be a mass of randomly connected rooms; as such, each room is, in a sense, a self-contained adventure, with the challenge to the PCs being to make it out of the room alive. We want rooms to be colorful, challenging, and ideally to include a number of random elements - so even if players compare notes they don't know exactly what to expect. We want rooms to be dangerous enough to cycle through players (think Tomb of Horrors and Grimtooth's Traps) - but at the same time, we want to create an experience that's entertaining as opposed to frustrating. So you may walk into a sphere of annihilation - but is there anything we can do to make that something you can smile at? If you're interested, let me know I'll send you more details (power levels of PCs, etc).

With DMs, the Tower will be run for 80 consecutive hours throughout the convention. While I've got myself and a few other DMs on board to run it, I'd love to have as many "celebrity" DMs as possible take a shift, to make it a more memorable experience for the players. It's an hour commitment; if you're interested, let me know and tell me what times youd be available. Of course, it's not going to be a normal adventure; at any given time, you're going to have six spectators, and part of the challenge is to make things dramatic enough so as to keep the spectators entertained as well as the players. Part of this falls to the room designer, but as DMs we'll need to bring some energy to the table.

In any case, if you are interested in helping as a DM or in designing one or more rooms, please contact me offlist. Thanks for your time.

-Keith Baker

Aneoth wrote:It would be nice to remember Robert Bledsaw during the convention as well.

grodog wrote:I'm definitely planning to submit some, even though I won't be attending the show this year.  We could kibbitz in this thread, as far as I'm concerned

PaulKM wrote:grodog,

Please call me Paul.  Keith just sent them.  I've given them a quick read and I like the whole set-up.

So, who's in on the room design?