Monte Cook's newest venture, Dungeonaday.com, is not a book or product like those usually reviewed here - it's a subscription to an expanding set of online content in the form of a large, multi-level dungeon for D&D 3.5. It's a new type of gaming product (to me, at least) and certainly shows promise in its early days.
Monte was kind enough to offer me a free month's subscription to Dungeonaday.com; and after some confusion (yes, I use MY email address to login, not Monte's: I'm clearly becoming senile), I've taken a look around the site to see what's there. I was, naturally, curious from the moment I heard about this venture - not just from the point of view of a D&D player who can always use more quality content, but also from that of someone who watched Monte help to pioneer our little PDF industry. I can't help wondering, therefore, whether this sort of product is something destined to catch on; certainly with Dungeonaday,com and the popularity of D&D Insider, it seems that there are enough people willing to subscribe to online services to suggest that the future may hold many more such things.
Anyway! I want to talk about Dungeonaday.com specifically, and leave the business speculation to Monte.
As you probably know by now (and if you don't you can easily check out the site in its preview mode without forking out any money), Dungeonaday.com describes a megadungeon called "Dragon's Delve". At the point of writing this, one week after launch, Monte has detailed 17 areas out of about 40 of Level 1: The Upper Reaches. A side-view map shows the proximity of 6 other levels, presumably of equal size, yet to be developed (although there is a tunnel leading down from the lowest of these, hinting at many more levels to come).
Level 1 contains a mix of fairly mundane locations (cellars, refuse pit, side hall) and evocative-sounding places such as "The Malfunctioning Disc", "The Eyes Have It" and "The Magic Doors and the Mundane Lantern". The overall location list for the level makes full use of hyperlinks, whisking you straight to the entry page for that location, where you'll find the area mapped and described. In addition you'll find photographs of the area built using one of the site's sponsors, Dwarven Forge, which presumably creates an additional revenue stream for the service. Hyperlinks, naturally, take you to pages of additional information, including handouts relevant to that area, glossary entries for names and places, monster stats on d20srd.org, and links to areas adjoining the location in question.
These pages are all simplistically designed: there's a preset layout divided into relevant sections, such as "Sights and Sounds" and "Inhabitants", plus the obligatory boxed text, making it fairly easy to absorb quickly. The maps are clear (if, again, a little simplistic), and there's no artwork to speak of. This latter point is, perhaps, the site's weakest point in my opinion: evocative artwork of each location would enhance the product immeasurably (and be far preferable to the Dwarven Forge photos on every page), although I can only begin to imagine the havoc that would play with schedules and budgets.
So that's a basic look at the "core" of the service. Personally, given the promised update rate, it seems to me to be worth the $7 or so per month; that's a little more than D&D Insider, I think (Is it? Damn, I can't remember how much D&D Insider costs!), but this is a very different beast to D&D Insider.
I wanted to briefly touch on what I'd call the "non-core" stuff - that's things like bonus encounters, player handouts, a blog, and so on. The bonus encounters will apparently appear monthy (as yet there are none); somewhat strangely, the site says that the number of bonus encounters depends on the number of members, and (I quote): "So the more of your friends you recruit, the more content you'll get for the same subscription cost." That bugs me in a way I can't quite qualify. I don't know - maybe it's just me?
There are five player handouts so far - a diary entry, a map, a player's intro, and so on - although, to my surprise, these aren't presented as downloadable documents, but rather just images on the page. I guess it's easy enough to print them out still, and with luck Monte will provide compiled PDFs of each level that folks can download and put in their Dungeonaday binder. That's just a wish-list item, though - I don't know what Monte's plans are, if any, in that regard.
So, here would be my wish-list. Note that the existence of a wish-list does not in any way mean I don't think the product worthwhile: I am, to the contrary, quite excited about it. But nothing is ever perfect, and here's what I would personally like to see, in this order:
So, let's summarize. I feel I've focused a little too much on what I didn't like, while there's a LOT that I do like. So I'll try to rectify that here. I love the effort made to use web technology to enhance a product in ways that a static book cannot do - hyperlinks being of course, the main deal here. It sounds simple, but I can actually imagine running this dungeon from a laptop. That appeals to me immensely.
I love Monte's imagination; I always have. Location names which conjure images in my mind before I even click on them, a backstory which is flavourful but doesn't bore you to tears with an author's version of "let me tell you about my character", again all hyperlinked to a glossary. Information is very accessible, easily and quickly. A player can ask you a question, and the answer will be at your fingertips instantly. Again, this glossary highlights a strength I just touched on: when a player asks, say, "What's the Fallen Duchy?", the DM can provide a simple answer. Instead of pouring through pages and pages of interminable backstory, he simply says "Once known as the verdant and flourishing Duchy of Chordille, this remote and sparsely populated region is now without a ruler." And that's probably enough. I like that.
I like Dungeonaday.com. I think it's reasonably priced; I think it's an interesting concept; I admire Monte Cook's work generally; and I like the author himself. I use semi-colons far too often. Yes, I have my small wish-list, but, as I mentioned earlier, there are no deal-breakers there. When my free month's subsription runs out, I'll sign up for a few months at the very least. You can't go wrong by checking this out, and I wish Monte luck with the venture.
Monte was kind enough to offer me a free month's subscription to Dungeonaday.com; and after some confusion (yes, I use MY email address to login, not Monte's: I'm clearly becoming senile), I've taken a look around the site to see what's there. I was, naturally, curious from the moment I heard about this venture - not just from the point of view of a D&D player who can always use more quality content, but also from that of someone who watched Monte help to pioneer our little PDF industry. I can't help wondering, therefore, whether this sort of product is something destined to catch on; certainly with Dungeonaday,com and the popularity of D&D Insider, it seems that there are enough people willing to subscribe to online services to suggest that the future may hold many more such things.
Anyway! I want to talk about Dungeonaday.com specifically, and leave the business speculation to Monte.
As you probably know by now (and if you don't you can easily check out the site in its preview mode without forking out any money), Dungeonaday.com describes a megadungeon called "Dragon's Delve". At the point of writing this, one week after launch, Monte has detailed 17 areas out of about 40 of Level 1: The Upper Reaches. A side-view map shows the proximity of 6 other levels, presumably of equal size, yet to be developed (although there is a tunnel leading down from the lowest of these, hinting at many more levels to come).
Level 1 contains a mix of fairly mundane locations (cellars, refuse pit, side hall) and evocative-sounding places such as "The Malfunctioning Disc", "The Eyes Have It" and "The Magic Doors and the Mundane Lantern". The overall location list for the level makes full use of hyperlinks, whisking you straight to the entry page for that location, where you'll find the area mapped and described. In addition you'll find photographs of the area built using one of the site's sponsors, Dwarven Forge, which presumably creates an additional revenue stream for the service. Hyperlinks, naturally, take you to pages of additional information, including handouts relevant to that area, glossary entries for names and places, monster stats on d20srd.org, and links to areas adjoining the location in question.
These pages are all simplistically designed: there's a preset layout divided into relevant sections, such as "Sights and Sounds" and "Inhabitants", plus the obligatory boxed text, making it fairly easy to absorb quickly. The maps are clear (if, again, a little simplistic), and there's no artwork to speak of. This latter point is, perhaps, the site's weakest point in my opinion: evocative artwork of each location would enhance the product immeasurably (and be far preferable to the Dwarven Forge photos on every page), although I can only begin to imagine the havoc that would play with schedules and budgets.
So that's a basic look at the "core" of the service. Personally, given the promised update rate, it seems to me to be worth the $7 or so per month; that's a little more than D&D Insider, I think (Is it? Damn, I can't remember how much D&D Insider costs!), but this is a very different beast to D&D Insider.
I wanted to briefly touch on what I'd call the "non-core" stuff - that's things like bonus encounters, player handouts, a blog, and so on. The bonus encounters will apparently appear monthy (as yet there are none); somewhat strangely, the site says that the number of bonus encounters depends on the number of members, and (I quote): "So the more of your friends you recruit, the more content you'll get for the same subscription cost." That bugs me in a way I can't quite qualify. I don't know - maybe it's just me?
There are five player handouts so far - a diary entry, a map, a player's intro, and so on - although, to my surprise, these aren't presented as downloadable documents, but rather just images on the page. I guess it's easy enough to print them out still, and with luck Monte will provide compiled PDFs of each level that folks can download and put in their Dungeonaday binder. That's just a wish-list item, though - I don't know what Monte's plans are, if any, in that regard.
So, here would be my wish-list. Note that the existence of a wish-list does not in any way mean I don't think the product worthwhile: I am, to the contrary, quite excited about it. But nothing is ever perfect, and here's what I would personally like to see, in this order:
- Monthly compiled PDFs of each level;
- Artwork, rather than ads for Dwarven Forge;
- A set number of bonus encounters per month rather than basing it on membership levels.
So, let's summarize. I feel I've focused a little too much on what I didn't like, while there's a LOT that I do like. So I'll try to rectify that here. I love the effort made to use web technology to enhance a product in ways that a static book cannot do - hyperlinks being of course, the main deal here. It sounds simple, but I can actually imagine running this dungeon from a laptop. That appeals to me immensely.
I love Monte's imagination; I always have. Location names which conjure images in my mind before I even click on them, a backstory which is flavourful but doesn't bore you to tears with an author's version of "let me tell you about my character", again all hyperlinked to a glossary. Information is very accessible, easily and quickly. A player can ask you a question, and the answer will be at your fingertips instantly. Again, this glossary highlights a strength I just touched on: when a player asks, say, "What's the Fallen Duchy?", the DM can provide a simple answer. Instead of pouring through pages and pages of interminable backstory, he simply says "Once known as the verdant and flourishing Duchy of Chordille, this remote and sparsely populated region is now without a ruler." And that's probably enough. I like that.
I like Dungeonaday.com. I think it's reasonably priced; I think it's an interesting concept; I admire Monte Cook's work generally; and I like the author himself. I use semi-colons far too often. Yes, I have my small wish-list, but, as I mentioned earlier, there are no deal-breakers there. When my free month's subsription runs out, I'll sign up for a few months at the very least. You can't go wrong by checking this out, and I wish Monte luck with the venture.
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