Puzzle Dungeon Press #5

I’m working on a new escape room puzzle dungeon for Old-School Essentials! It’s been almost 6 months in the works and I’m ready to show what we’ve got.

A Familiar Tower is an escape room roleplaying adventure module for Old-School Essentials. While looting a wizard’s tower, the PCs become trapped and must use their wits and ingenuity to navigate the unusual space and its denizens.

Follow the project on BackerKit!

Here’s the cover mockup. All the art is by Skullboy AKA BetterLegends AKA Sam Mameli.

And here’s yours truly with the infamous oatmeal box wizard tower in living cardboard at a playtest at Gary Con 2025. My son helped me build it.

It’s been great to have an excuse to work with better-legendary Skullboy for the art. I’m also thrilled to be working with Sam Sorensen again as returning editor, developer, and now layout artist.

The crowdfunding launch for A Familiar Tower will be on BackerKit in February 2026. It’ll be ready to print at launch—I’ll just need you! :D

The pre-launch page is up right now and ready for button clicks to follow along for project updates. Please clickity-clack the button that says “Yes, count me in!” And if you think someone else you know might like a non-euclidean wizard tower escape room, please send them the link too!

Did you know I have a blog? It’s true! Did you know that I recently moved blogs? Also true! You can find the latest and possibly greatest ramblings of mine at PuzzleDungeon.com

If you’re like others in the old-school hobby that are using feed readers like it’s the early 2000s, then you’ll need to update to the new feed url to get the newest posts.

Here’s some stuff you may have missed.

Experimenting to identify magic items CAN be fun, provided that the magic item itself was designed right. I dive in to how to do that by making a bunch of fun magic items for you to steal for your own games. Some of them are straight out of A Familiar Tower.

Ever try the dark caribean pirate adventure game Pirate Borg? I did! It’s great, by the way. I continue my few and far between series on building better puzzles with a review and workshop of the adventure I ran.

While editing A Familiar Tower, I wound up adding a magic item which had way more of an impact on characters than I thought it would—and an even bigger impact on me. Here’s something to reflect on.

I find myself gravitating toward the simplest approach for playtesting and for one-shots in general. I don’t want to waste too much time. So I use these FKR-ish rules. TL;DR: Don’t worry about it.

Play more games and don’t forget your sunblock.