Thursday, September 9, 2021

Ten Years of the Zenopus Archives



Ten years ago today, I made the first post to this blog, "What lies in the (undiscovered) deeper levels where Zenopus met his doom?", which was titled after Holmes' question in the coda to the Sample Dungeon. It was essentially just a teaser post, with just two links, both still active: one to the Zenopus Archives site, which was already under construction, and one to the Holmes Basic subforum on ODD74. But soon after that I started to post regularly, which ballooned to 65 posts in the last four months of 2011, and then 130 the next year, a pace that I have not kept up with since. But I have kept at it, and now it's ten years later, which is almost three times as long as the original era of Holmes Basic, and I have no plans for stopping.



 Source


TSR celebrated their 10th Anniversary with a Collector's Set, so I'm doing the same with 10 years of highlights, a sort of "Collector's Set" for the Zenopus Archives:


2011


Caves of Chaos Revealed


2012

Warlock or How to Play D&D without playing D&D?


2013

The Cthulhu Mythos in D&D in the 1970s


2014

20 Backgrounds for OD&D

Fearsome Monsters


2015

Visualizing Castle Greyhawk

Beyond the Door to Monster Mountain


2016

Con Report for NTRPGCon 2016

Gygaxian Orc Tribes


2017

Holmes Ref 2.0

Tales of Peril Book Club


2018

Gygax's "Dungeon Delving" Playtest Reports



2019

The Holmes Basic G+ Community Archive

In Search of the Brazen Head of Zenopus at Gary Con

The Master's Lair, A Play Report


2020 

Release of The Ruined Tower of Zenopus 



2021

d20 Unexpectedly Intelligent Monsters in the Monster Manual

Holmes Basic Cover Art: Exhibited!

Thursday, September 2, 2021

The Ruined Tower of Zenopus: September Starter Sale


DMs Guild is having a "September Starter Sale", with select introductory adventures up to 30% off through September 7th, and The Ruined Tower of Zenopus has been selected, so it is currently only $1.39!

As a reminder, if you missed the announcement last fall, the pdf now includes a full-page illustration by Chris Holmes (son of J. Eric Holmes) and a printer-friendly dungeon map. The purchase also includes a separate png file of the dungeon map suitable for VTTs (optimized for Roll20).

For old-school enthusiasts, here on the blog I also offered notes on retro-converting it:

Running It Retro, Part I 

Running It Retro, Part II

The adventure went Platinum back in January (1,001 sales), and is now close to 1,500 sales. However, the next badge (Mithril) at DMs Guild doesn't come until 2,501 sales are hit.

Find it here:
The Ruined Tower of Zenopus on DMs Guild


Click here to read reviews of the RTOZ by various bloggers