A Walk in the Dark A look in to the mind of an RPG designer

The Coming Dark, Chapter One – Campaign Preview

***WARNING*** If you are one of my players from the Wizard of the Coast forums, this could be some major spoilerage. I trust you to use your judgment when reading this, and if you do I hope you know to put it out of your mind come game time.

I've been kicking around the idea of providing a "preview" of my campaign, but the hardest part in doing such a thing is deciding what content to include that isn't horrifically spoilerish. Besides the introductory material, I'm hesitant to include any information in the individual scenes that might shed light on to what is going on in the campaign.

In any event, I have put together the attached "Campaign Preview." It doesn't show much, but it includes:

• The campaign introduction and character creation guidelines.
• The detailed description of Solis and the surrounding area, including maps of Solis itself and its surrounding area.
• What is pretty much a "random" encounter just outside the village of Solis.
• An encounter with a new type of enemy in my campaign: the "shadowtouched".
• Another small, non-critical encounter which is actually based on the "Hall of Spiders" encounter I had originally planned for the campaign.
• Appendix A, which contains most of the stat blocks for all the important NPCs in Solis.
• One sample piece of artwork and writing: the first page of the Book of Light.
• An explanation as to why I made this campaign in the first place.

It's not much, but it's something. Anyway... Here it is:

The Coming Dark, Chapter One - Campaign Sampler

I considered at one point giving Solis and the surrounding area the full "campaign setting" treatment, but I decided not to because it gives Solis too much scale. I *want* Solis to be small and helpless, surrounded in mystery, unaware of what evils lurk beyond its walls.

I am putting the finishing touches on TCD1, which for the most part involves editing it for the umpteenth time and creating the graphics for a few more handouts. Mechanically, it's definitely done and is actually in the hands of an "elite few" who have been curious about what the hell I'm up to.

It will be released in the very near future, and we'll see what happens then.