Blue Shallows, Dark Depths

  E veryone is trying to find a way to stop making multiple dice rolls just to make an attack in D&D-style combat.  Well, okay, not everyone, but certainly it is discussed a lot. From the "auto-hit" of  Into the Odd - style combat, to the more recent exploration of the "Kubular method"  of attack rolls by Marcia B. of Traverse Fantasy, and many more discussions in between, many of the best and brightest of the old-school and adjacent scenes have explored the idea and continue to do so.  I am certainly not one of the best and brightest, however, I have been thinking a lot about this. My issue is twofold: I like making as few dice rolls as possible, and I hate numbers. Even basic math, if needed regularly, takes me out of the game. I know this is a personal problem, but hey, doesn't all good innovation come from tight constraints? Probably not, but whatever. In a new rule system I'm tinkering with, combat is resolved by a single roll-off between the attack...

I thought I'd start this blog off by sharing an adventure that I never got to use. The campaign I had planned it for fizzed out before it even started, and so it is completely unplaytested. I hope you find use for it in your own game or at least some inspiration.  This is relatively vanilla fantasy fare, but when something in this adventure differs from traditional fantasy, I will point it out.  The dungeon and surrounding material was originally made for a system that I am developing called Ulter , which is based on Knave by Ben Milton. I won't be including things like stats for monsters or exact treasure amounts. If you want to use this in your own game, you can figure that out based on the system you are using. As such, this adventure is presented as "some assembly required."  Feel free to critique this adventure in the comments if you want.