ADVENTURE SITE CONTEST: WINNERS

  After weeks of reviews and days of intense deliberation, the judges have decided the top eight entries to the Adventure Site Contest, who be all be included in Adventure Sites I. The top two will also receive an adventure of their choice from the Merciless Merchants catalog, and number one is King of the Adventure Sites, and is contractually obligated to so introduce himself at all formal and professional gatherings.
  To start with, thank you to all who submitted. All the entries had elements we all enjoyed, and I can see using all of them. If the contest has inspired anyone to write more, to release adventure sites on their own to earn tens, nay dozens of dollars, then I hope you do…the first motivation for this contest is to give feedback to writers, and I hope everyone who submits gets a lot out of it. This was a wonderful privilege to judge and run, and I’m excited to see all of you submitting again next time, plus a few dozen more. The last few reviews from Grutzi and Shocktohp are still to come, but both are committed to reviewing all the entries.
  That said, the 8th to 3rd ranked entries chosen for the honor of inclusion in Adventure Sites I are (in order of receipt):
Legacy of the Black Mark, By DangerIsReal
  The very first entry received, and only a couple points from winning outright, Legacy of the Black Mark is a chilling site that positively oozes with flavor, all laser-focused on making a brutal little dungeon with vast wealth and so, so many ways of dying. A solid map, a wonderful mixture of dangers and boons, a story to be discovered, not told…the bar was set very high indeed with this adventure site as the first submission.

St. Durham’s Home for Wayward Youth, By Trent Smith
  A Greyhawk adventure through and through, St. Durham’s Home for Wayward Youth is an orphanage, a temple, a slaver’s den, and a cult site all at once, eschewing the simple “here’s an evil hole in the ground” formula for a complex site that can be approached on multiple levels, from a direct assault to being used as a simple drop-off-point for the Problem Orc Babies. While the Greyhawk assumptions of the location won’t apply to every campaign, the craftsmanship that went into this site is undeniable, clearly written by one of the game’s greats.  

Lipply’s Tavern, By Grützi
  Every judge who submitted an adventure site came in at a known disadvantage; we do not rank (and thus score) our own sites. So when you see Lipply’s Tavern on the list here you should be rightfully impressed, as it means it has one of the highest average rankings by all the rest of us. The wonderful mixture of charm, intrigue, variety, and just pure solid game design shines through even in the teeniest of fonts. If this doesn’t spawn at least half a dozen Hobbit-Hole Crawls in the next six months, I’ll be shocked.

Etta Capp’s Cottage, By Scott Marcley
  Arachnophobia delivered by way of the Brothers Grimm, Etta Capp’s Cottage would sweep first, second, and third place by itself if we were ranking on consistency of fairytale flavor. Personally, I cannot imagine running an Ettercap the same way ever again…of course they’re terrifying storybook spider-widows with houses made of webs. The fairytale tone might clash with some campaigns but for any game with even the slightest toleration for the things of the fey that random encounter roll of “Spiders, Giant” will never be the same again.

The Glen of Shrikes, By GiantGoose
  Without a doubt the most controversial submission on the list, The Glen of Shrikes is an imaginative, creative, and frankly unprecedented submission that is less “site” more “sites”, being a whole darned hex. As it is written I suspect it is frankly impossible to import whole cloth without running in the very specific hexcrawl game (the Ebony Coast). Which, don’t get me wrong, seems like a fun campaign to play in. But just judging in on the internal sub-sites, I can see several that are great to run without their original context. In the end, the creativity and skill displayed got it into the top eight, but if it had been focused on a single site it might have swept into the very top.

The Barrow Shrine of Corruption, By Peter McDevitt
  A quiet, understated entry at first only mentioned for the anatomical map, The Barrow Shrine of Corruption grows ever more impressive upon deeper reading. Very probably the closest to the platonic ideal of the “site for adventure” brief, the site’s very simplicity is itself an achievement; no words are wasted, every encounter, every scene is focused on making a wonderful, memorable adventure in the deep woods. And then it generously has the two open hooks pointing to more adventure sites.
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  …but I know what you want to know. You want to know not just who’s the best, but who are the best of the best, the cream of the cream, the penultimate and the ultimate. Well, those two need to get with me and Malrex for their adventure prizes, because…

Runner-Up: The Fountain of Bec, by Stooshie & Stramash
  A wonderful encapsulation of everything we like about the game, in the Fountain of Bec Stooshie took a random ruin map from online, dumped a randomly-generated dungeon layout underneath, and then did the work to make these simple maps into a living, breathing adventure site full of trolls, double-headed dogs, and an extraplanar octopus. They are traps, there are challenges, there’s an order of battle…and there are treasures, not just monetary but also cleverly hidden magic, a beautifully imagined sword, and the wonderful oft-neglected trope of a saint’s relic. It hits on all marks, and that’s why Fountain of Bec is the only submission that managed to be in the top eight for every single judge. Well done.
  …and the winner is…

Lost Vault of Kadish, by Jonathan Becker
  Buried beneath the desert sands in a lonely centaur-haunted oasis, the Lost Vault of Kadish just…works. From the well-imagined initial invitation to the underworld with the worn spear-holding statue, to the frantic initial trap/fight at the entrance, to the set-pieces built into every room, I cannot imagine a session in the vault not being a fondly remembered session for all parties involved. Becker in the Vault shows that puzzles, tricks, and traps don’t have to be mundane, while the mostly-linear map has just enough nonlinearity with the difficult bypass route designed as much to trap as to exploit. It’s D&D, of course we should be climbing around in a sandy, gritty tomb doing exactly what the Vault of Kadish wants us to do. Now Jonathan Becker is both legally and morally required to dispense with his B/X Blackrazor online handle to be known forevermore as KING OF THE ADVENTURE SITES. If you would like a crown, I will need your home address to mail you your Burger King coupon of choice. Long live the king.
  …at least until next year.
  Once again, thank you to all participants, to the judges, and to everyone who boosted the signal for this site. To the eight writers selected, please let me know any edits/writeups/modifications you will want to make before publication. Watch this space for a final analysis, and the announcement of the release of Adventure Sites I, coming free to an itch/drivethru near you. And thanks for reading…I hope this was a great experience for you, too.
  Now go play some D&D.