Announcing the Winners of Adventure Site Contest III

​   You’ve all been waiting for it, but now it is time.
   You’ve laughed.
   You’ve cried.
   You’ve been on tenterhooks, reading all the reviews (or listening in some cases). Now, at long last, you can know the answer to your most burning question…
   Which of the FORTY ADVENTURES submitted made it into the top eight? Who’s the new King of the Adventure Sites?
   Well, all the judges have spoken, and now we have them. All eight are excellent adventure sites, sites I’m proud to publish in the compilation. Competition for the top spots was extremely close, leading to a few ties in third and fourth place, but in the end, the winner and runner-up are clear.
   I’m extremely grateful to everyone who’s submitted this year, and I hope all of you consider submitting again. Over half of the sites I personally found usable enough to put onto my own campaign’s map, and I hope everyone who submits finds the feedback helpful, ideally to be able to take what they’ve made, fix it up a bit, and publish it independently to riches and fame. All that said, only the top eight selected by the panel of judges make it into Adventure Sites III, so without further ado, our finalists are…
   Albariño’s Icy Cellar, by Zonaru
   At last, we have a DRAGON LAIR among the finalist, this one a massive icy fortress of sweeping scope and ambition, not just a white dragon lair but also a full-up crawling fortress filled with mad dwarves and a full-up shadow demon. This is exactly what AD&D should be, and I look forward to my own players hitting this place when they next venture into the nearby glaciers.

   Crawling Maw of Malakor, by Danger Is Real
   Both “abandoned wizard lair” and “goblin caves” are such common tropes that they almost seem trite, but this one shows that if you mash the two together and add a hearty helping of Field Folio plus poison, you have a beautiful site full of danger, treasure, and a whole heck of a lot of poison saves. Memorable and clever, this one was great when my own players hit it…I just wish they’d rolled worse on those saves.

   Dweller in the Mist, by Sandbox Sorcerer
   This one is wild, and if we were having an art contest I think it would have won best cover in a heartbeat. It’s got it where it counts gameplay-wise, too…this thing has pizzazz out the wazoo with a crazy tropical island adventure chock-a-block with on-theme men and monsters all leading up to the DRAGON LAIR of the titular dweller in the mist. My parties aren’t, uh, partying in the oceanic tropics right now but the next time they set sail you better believe this stuffed little island is going on an ocean hex.

   Ophidian Temple, by Scott M.
   Still in the jungle but now amidst thick steaming dark-heart terrain, the drums and incense of returning finalist Scott M’s snakeman temple drips with a savage flavor, as befits the temple of a snake-gorilla demon. The clever mechanics like choking deadly incense clouds coupled with wonderful pressure-plate traps made this a blast when my group hit it just this past week. Classic and flavorful at the same time, a wonderful place to visit, just mind the giant ants.

   Rockall, by Stooshie
   Another returner from previous finals, this time around Stooshie presented us another ocean hex location, this time a hag-ridden, roc-haunted, merfolk-laden sea stack loaded down with the treasures of countless shipwrecks for a novel underwater adventure that has a lot of above-the-surface action too. Straining the bounds of what B/X can do at the eXpert levels, this thing will delight my players when they go back to voyaging…after roc and hag ruin their favorite caravel, of course.

   Spiteful Spring, by Zathras Adventures
   Coming equipped with frankly too much of a good think in the form of its manifold beautiful maps, Spiteful Spring leans into the ACKS setting with a nymph-haunted bathhouse ruin, infested by vermin and bandits and orcs and ghosts and a witch and giant frogs…sure, it’s Auran Empire, but it also translates perfectly well to any world that has ruined baths and villas, like my own…and this was an excellent jaunt for a low-level party hunting for fortune amidst civilization’s tumbled wreckage. It executed great, just what we want in a lowbie site.

   …but all of those came behind our penultimate site, a place of howling winds and ice and death:

   Bones of the Mountain, by Jakob MacFarland
   The flavor is metal as all get-out, but the real appeal to this one is how well-executed the map and traps and monsters all are. This is a nightmare icy mountain assault, even before the players reach the council of wights all in an ominous circle of doom. Everything about this feels Conan but underneath you’re looking at a very good dungeon crawl. You know my glacial mountain area has this one seeded into it too. Well done on the silver, Mr. MacFarland.

   Yet as great as all these are, none of them claimed the very top prize. The King of the Adventure Sites took a look at all the ice and the theme of temples and rejected the first while embracing the second:

   Temple of Bast, by John Nash
   You know him, you love him, Mr. Nash has been a submitter each time to the Adventure Site Contest, with improvements every single time…and this time, he hit it out of the park with a cat-themed take on the quintessential, nay, Platonic, Adventure Site. A ruined pyramid, guarded by cats (with hilarious cat-themed traps like a ball of poison knocked off a shelf), in the midst of being plundered by a wizard and his gnolls…this thing has got it going on, perfect in terms of scope, wonderfully balanced in terms of risk and reward, written for Rules Cyclopedia of all things…impressive work, sir, and I look forward to running this once my players bump into it.
    ALL HAIL JOHN NASH, KING OF THE ADVENTURE SITES

Look to the compilation to release in the next couple weeks. I’m a little busy with other projects too but this one needs to be out in the world ASAP. You’re all going to love it, trust me.