TTRPG Review: Escape from the Dinkins Building
Aug. 16th, 2025 09:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ermingardenI ran Escape from the Dinkins Building for
fiona15351, and we had an absolute blast! I highly recommend it. It's designed for parties levels 2-5; we ran it with two PCs at level 6, one rogue and one paladin, and that worked fine. The setting is modern-day NYC, but magic and typical D&D fantasy elements are real and an acknowledged part of society. As adventurers, your characters are city employees in some capacity.Here's the summary:
Having fallen asleep during a mandated training, the party awakens to find themselves trapped in the haunted basement of the Dinkins Building. To escape, they must face a series of challenges and find the sign-in sheet that proves they attended, lest they be cursed to repeat the training, forever.
As the summary suggests, it's a very funny adventure, although some of the jokes may be too obscure if you don't live in NYC, and many appeal primarily to city employees and other people very familiar with local government bureaucracy. (Fiona was forced to consult the Wikipedia pages for Fiorello La Guardia and Staten Island Chuck.)
There is a hilarious special mechanic, which I am going to discuss behind a cut. If you think you are likely to play Escape from the Dinkins Building as a player, don't read this; it's supposed to be secret from the PCs! ( Read more... )
The adventure is designed to take four hours, assuming the players and DM are experienced. As I recall, it took us less than that, and there are suggestions for what to cut if you don't have that much time. The module is clearly written, with a good amount of detail (and good maps!), such that I think it would be a good choice for an inexperienced or even first-time DM. It's ideal for players interested in roleplay and social encounters - this is definitely not a pure dungeon crawl - but the fights are solid as well. Overall, it's just a really fun oneshot and definitely worth playing!
I cannot say that I ever expected to use my dayjob tag on a post about a TTRPG, but I am so, so happy this exists.
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Admin Post: New Challenge: Kids These Days
Aug. 14th, 2025 08:41 pm![[admin post]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/entry/admin_post.png){kind=small}
dawn_felagund posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
silwritersguild
If there is a unifier among generations, it is complaining about the kids and teens in the generations coming up behind them. There was likely an ancient Mesopotamian complaining about the brainrot effects of that newfangled cuneiform and kids carving their names on the ziggurat walls. Likewise, there is no reason to believe our beloved Tolkien characters were immune to these timeless worries and whinges about the young people around them (or experienced the ever-helpful "advice" of their elders when they were themselves whippersnappers).
This month's challenge will offer a bingo card chock-full of perennial complaints about kids and teens. Choose one or several prompts to include in your fanwork. Numbers will not be called; you can select any prompt you want at any time. Your fanwork does not have to be about kids and teens; as always, we welcome creative interpretations of our prompts.
There are special stamps available for completing rows, columns, diagonals, or (if you are old enough to withstand the effort of going uphill both ways) a full card blackout where you manage every prompt. Note that, to complete rows and blackouts, you do not need to use all of the prompts in a single fanwork but can use them across multiple fanworks. Let the moderators know if you need one of the special stamps.
You can find the bingo card and text prompts for the Kids These Days challenge here.
Thank you to hîn_isil for this month's adorable stamps!
In order to receive a stamp for your fanwork, your response must be posted to the archive on or before 15 September 2025. For complete challenge guidelines, see the Challenges page on our website.
Admin Post: Prompts Needed for September's Jumble Sale Challenge!
Aug. 14th, 2025 06:14 pmdawn_felagund posting in silwritersguild
Have you ever noticed one of our challenges or prompts that would be absolutely perfect … for someone else to write? Or maybe the perfect storm of challenge and prompt combos that would be entirely delicious, intriguing, perplexing, or evil? For our September challenge, Jumble Sale, you will have your chance to offer up past challenges and prompts to other creators to work their magic!
How It Will Work
You can offer up to five items "for sale" at the jumble sale! Items should consist of a past SWG challenge or a prompt for a challenge. You can combine challenges and prompts, but all challenges and prompts should come from the SWG collection. You can find the full list of challenges here. Items will be listed as the prompts in the Jumble Sale challenge for other creators to make fanworks for.
How many challenges/prompts can you include in your item? As many as you want! Be tame, go wild, the choice is yours!
Next, you can set an optional "price" on your items. These are extra conditions that the creator must fulfill in claiming your item. Remember that the SWG is a positive-focused space; make sure your price is what you want to see, not what you want to avoid.
Some examples:
- It's Magic challenge using the prompt "The stain will not come out…" from the First Lines challenge
- Combine the Soap Opera prompt "secret family" with the Also Appearing prompt "mockumentary"
- Notion Club Revival challenge; price: include the pairing Celegorm/Maeglin
Ready to put some items in our Jumble Sale? Use the form here to send us your items!
Tag clarifications
Aug. 10th, 2025 12:36 pmgrundyscribbling posting in innumerable_starsIf you nominated Lady of the Blue Brooch, please let us know what fandom it was intended for? The association was lost. We think it's meant for LotR books.- If you nominated "Worldbuilding: Gandalf enlists Lobelia on the Quest instead of Gandalf" in the Hobbit book fandom please clarify to the mods what you intended? (We think it's meant to be "Gandalf enlists Lobelia on the Quest instead of Bilbo" but maybe we're not thinking far enough outside the original timeline?)
- If you nominated the following under the Crossovers fandom, please clarify what you intended - these groups can be nominated under LotR books OR Silmarillion without requiring a crossover: Group: Arwen & Celebrimbor; Group: Celebrian & Celebrimbor; Group: Celebrimbor/Sauron (Crossover Fandom).