Day 1

Welcome to December, and this year’s advent calendar adventure!

I ran my first advent calendar adventure back in 2021, after having a stray thought that it might be fun to release an adventure in pieces every day throughout December. It was so much fun to work on, and the reception was so positive, that I decided to do it again the next year. It’s now become a bit of a tradition for me (if you can call it a tradition when you’re only in the fourth year of doing something) and I look forward to it all year long.

If you’ve been here before, hello! I really do appreciate you coming back for more, and for trusting me enough to buy something incomplete on day 1, sight unseen. I hope you enjoy the journey we’re about to go on.

If this is your first time doing this with me, it’s a pleasure to have you on board. After three years of doing this I’ve (hopefully) figured out how to run it smoothly, and I also have a pretty good idea what sort of things people ask as we get rolling on the month. I’ve compiled something of an FAQ for this thing below, so keep reading and I’ll explain how this is going to work and what to expect over the next three-and-a-bit weeks.

Thanks again for picking this up on day 1. I hope you enjoy The Witch of Drithwyn Weald.

-Chris

FAQ

What is this?

The Witch of Drithwyn Weald is a hex crawl for the fantasy adventure game of your choice. It’s written with A Dungeon Game in mind, but converting from ADG to other systems is trivially easy. The adventure text will have very little emphasis on mechanisms and statistics and much more focus on cool stuff to put into your game.

Can you explain the release structure a little more?

I’m releasing this in pieces, one a day every day up until Christmas. Every morning I’ll post an update with a new piece of the adventure for you to read. At a minimum, you’ll receive the text for one hex every day. Because of the nature of hex keys and the way I write, some are longer than others. Where the hex keys are smaller you’re also likely to receive extra stuff with them - whether that’s tables of adventure hooks and rumours, encounter tables, pieces of flash fiction, or music to listen to while you read (or play, or whatever). Every day will be a new treat for you.

What’s the deal with the pricing?

The price structure is something I did in the first year running this advent calendar and it’s become a feature of the project. The price starts low and rises as more content is added. Whenever you buy in, you always get all of the content and won’t ever have to pay more than the price on the day you purchased the adventure. When you purchase it you get immediate access to all extant sections, and you’ll start receiving the daily updates.

How are updates added/distributed?

I upload new files every morning, which will appear in the downloads section of the product page. I also release a devlog every day, which will land in your inbox along with a download link for the new files.

Won’t I end up with a lot of files?

Yes, you will. And that can be a little unmanageable. It’s fun to read the individual pieces every day but it doesn’t make for a very usable book at the end of things. When we’re all done - probably towards the end of December, when I’ve had a little break and had a chance to look over the book again - I’ll release a consolidated version that contains everything in one file.

What file formats do you release these in?

PDF and epub.

Will there be cool art?

Very unlikely. The focus here is on the words. I’m a writer, not an illustrator, and this is produced with a budget of exactly £0. Last year I tried my hand at illustrating the book and it turned out okay. At the time of writing this FAQ I’ve written all of The Witch of Drithwyn Weald but haven’t been able to produce any art. If I get the chance to make some during the course of the month and I think it’s good then I’ll release it, but currently there are no plans for artwork.

Will there be a print version?

I always had plans to print Reivdene and never managed to make it happen. Now that there are going to be four of these things I may look at anthologising them together, but I have no firm timeline for when that will happen. If and when it does, I’ll make sure that everyone who bought the digital versions receives some sort of discount on the physical book as a thank you for supporting them early on.