After 20 days on the road, Stacy and I are finally home. A double round of D&D in a Castle in Newcastle and then the Thought Bubble comic festival in Harrogate was one heck of a marathon. I had a wonderful time, but I’m also worn out and need some serious downtime to reorganize and recharge.
Last November when I completed my first D&D in a Castle DMing adventure, I mentioned that I wasn’t sure if I would go back or not. It was an incredibly intense experience, 26 hours of gaming over 4 days plus being “on” even when you’re not running an adventure, and with my current workload and obligations I honestly didn’t know if I could carve out the time to do it again. I also feared that part of the joy might have come from the “newness” of it all and that if I did it again it wouldn’t have the same impact.
Stacy knew I was going to return to the castle before I did. Every time my friends or colleagues asked about how it went and I started regaling them with stories about the amazing people and adventure I ran she could see that it sparked something special in me.
So, wanting to see if that gaming magic was repeatable and also wanting to intensely playtest a new adventure I was cooking up, I signed up for two campaigns in a row – two weeks at the castle with two different groups going through the same adventure…well, “same” in the sense that major set pieces and enemies were reused, but a big part of the adventure was woven through character backstories given to me by the players, so each one ended up having around 30-40% different material and, even when something similar happened, the motivation behind it was quite different.
I’m happy to report that D&D in a Castle once again delivered the goods. Two very different groups, each with their own approach, but both were there to game up a storm and we had a blast!
The first group of six players skewed older, with most of them having started D&D with first edition the same way I did. They were, in the best way possible, “old school” gamers who wanted to dungeon delve and kick ass, laughing out of game even while their characters were enduring harrowing experiences in game. It reminded me a lot of gaming in high school, but with better focus and decidedly higher production values at the table. Friendships formed fast and everyone seemed comfortable right from the start. The one younger player in this group (who received this vacation as a high school graduation gift from his parents and came on his own) was ‘adopted’ by the whole crew and they made sure his experience was so fun that he ended up staying on for a second round at a different table.
The second group of six had a decisive split – three players who skewed toward strategic play and three who were there to role-play scenes to the hilt. One of them had barely ever played any TTRPGs at all but had been at the castle last year, saw how much fun her husband had and wanted to be part of it this time. Two of the players were last minute additions when another Dungeon Master had to bow out, and thankfully they were solid additions to the team dynamic.
The adventure I put together, called Darklords’ Gambit, took place in the Ravenloft campaign setting. I kit-bashed some enemies, NPCs, items and locations from old sourcebooks and modules (while avoiding anything from Curse of Strahd, the most famous adventure in the setting) but made a new core plot that was all its own so players wouldn’t be able to guess what was coming next, even if they recognized some of the classic material.
Running the same adventure back-to-back meant I could immediately learn what worked (or didn’t) with the first group and lean into the strengths of it while also trying different beats and encounters. Finishing both playthroughs, I now have a solid adventure to use in the future if I ever want to run it again.
Last time I wrote about D&D in a Castle, I mentioned the concept of “emergent storytelling”, the unexpected narrative that forms through character choice alongside the randomness of dice rolls and I was able to test out ideas around promoting that again here in a much more deliberate way. Each character received a Tarokka card (the Ravenloft version of a tarot deck) and a few lines of horoscope-like verse I custom wrote based on their backstory that they received early in the adventure. Some of them immediately leaned into the ’prophecy’ they were given while others railed against it with all their might – either way, it helped drive storytelling at the table and kept them motivated even as they worked to unravel the overall mystery of the adventure.
Although I planned out quite a bit, I wasn’t afraid to improv as well. Some enemies became unexpected allies, some throwaway NPCs became important fixtures in the adventure, and many moments became surprisingly poignant based on a particularly strong or weak dice roll at the ‘right’ time. Eight hours of gaming per day is an intense narrative exercise that kept me on my toes, problem solving in real time while trying not to let players see too much of the duct tape and happy accidents that held it all together.
Last year I played a one-off game with Jason Azevedo and was impressed with the elaborate soundscapes he used to pull players into his game, but worried that setting up something similar would take a ridiculous amount of time and require me to act like a “DM DJ” at the table, constantly cueing up sound effects and music instead of paying attention to the game itself. Jason showed me how to use Syrinscape, an RPG-specific sound application, to build simple atmospheric sound loops I could tee up and fade between without needing a lot of babysitting. It’s not the kind of thing I would have thought to do for a home game, but the deluxe castle environment pushed me to work with it and I’m really happy I did. I don’t think I’ll ever go whole hog with specific battle/creature sounds and spell sound effects, but even just atmospheric sound running in the background helped to set scenes and make it clear to players that we were diving back into the game after each break.
Being way more comfortable with the staff, location and overall format and heading to the castle before Thought Bubble meant I was way less stressed than last year (when I did MCM Expo London and multiple comic shop signings before slamming into Castle Days) and better able to appreciate how amazing everyone on the Castle team really is. There were eleven Dungeon Masters on hand each round with six players at their table, plus support staff and the actual castle-hotel staff as well – almost a hundred people in total (along with Poppet, the Castle Cat) all working and playing together. From the outside it might seem a bit outrageous but when you’re in the thick of it, the event is impressively all-encompassing and I can see why around a third of the players attending are repeat customers.
I didn’t want to commit myself to any 2026 Castle dates until I finished this experiment and that may mean I miss out entirely next year. The castle team has booked dates further out than before and most of their Fall 2026 calendar is already locked in, but with a bit of luck I’ll be back for another campaign at some point and, when I do, I’ll let all of you here know about it.
Reversing the order of operations this year by going to a comic event after a double dose of castle time meant that I arrived in Harrogate pretty wiped out, energy-wise. Thought Bubble was a great time and I got to meet a ton of UK friends and fans, but there were times when I thought I was going to fall asleep at the table as my energy level crashed. By Sunday night and festival wrap up, Stacy and I had dinner with old friends and then crawled into bed at the hotel, barely able to keep our eyes open until 9pm.
That said, I signed a lot of comics over those two days and had wonderful conversations with established pros and young creators alike. Like TCAF, Thought Bubble is comics and creator-centric and that meant books and art were at the forefront of every interaction. It’s obvious why so many UK creators say it’s their favorite show of the year.
After Thought Bubble, Stacy and I took a train to London. Despite our overall exhaustion, we managed to see some engaging exhibits at the British Museum and had a couple good meals before heading to Heathrow airport and making the trek home.
Finally back in my studio, I have a ton of catching up to do but thankfully I don’t have any more trips planned for 2025. I burned hard attending so many events this year and have enjoyed almost all of them, but next year I need to be more careful about how filled up my calendar gets.
A Little Milestone
While we were on our whirlwind UK adventures, Conan the Barbarian #26 arrived in comic shops and the response to the first part of The Conquering Crown has been amazing. Between rounds of D&D in a Castle I visited with Conan artist Doug Braithwaite and at Thought Bubble Doug, letterer Richard Starkings and I had a wonderful breakfast meet up. I know I keep saying it, but everyone involved is so proud of the work and motivated to deliver their best and it really does show through when we meet in person.
Issue 26 is also a little milestone for me. When I was writing Conan the Barbarian at Marvel my run ended at issue 25, so it feels extra-good to push past that barrier and keep sprinting onward, month after month. This is the kind of long run I’ve always wanted to create in comics and, despite the intensity of the monthly deadlines, I enjoy the process and the momentum. I know at some point it will come to an end, but for now it feels good to collaborate with such an incredible team and have it recognized by both readers and retailers.
Current + Upcoming Releases
Upcoming Appearances
My convention dates for early 2026 will be announced soon, but for this week I’m thankfully leaving this section empty. 😉
Other Links
• The Writer Beware blog has a solid overview of the AI-generated spam emails being blasted out to authors, a series of phishing scams that claim they can point thousands of readers toward their titles. I get loads of these plaguing my inbox nowadays and they’re incredibly frustrating.
• The Steve Jackson Games reprint of the original Fighting Fantasy gamebooks did really well, so now they’re gearing up for the second set in the series.
• A conversation about old video games from my youth prompted me to look up a video of BARBARIAN from 1987. My brother and I had this game on our Commodore 64 and played the heck out of it. Imagine if I could have told young Zub what a barbaric future he had in store.
Jim
Zub on Amazon
Zub on BlueSky
Zub on deviantART
Zub on Facebook
Zub on GoodReads
Zub on Instagram
Zub on Patreon
Zub on Substack
Zub on YouTube
Follow this blog's RSS feed
Makeshift Miracle