Dungeon23 Week 2

Well this feels like a double success for me: I have managed to keep up my attempt at Dungeon23 for 2 weeks solid without issue, and I have managed 2 blog posts in 2 weeks as well. It is no coincidence that one is very definitely feeding into the other. So, this week I am going to give a bit of detail on the rooms that I have come up with, as well as talk about the effect that the challenge is having on my mindset as a dungeon master.

As things stand after 2 weeks

 The Rooms

I wrote last week about the general theme for level 1 and that was of an abandoned temple complex and observatory built into a hill, which has now been occupied by an orc tribe who are busy exploring it and using it as a base of operations. This has been the basis that I have worked to over the past 2 weeks, theming the rooms around how the orcs are now using them, whilst also working in their previous purpose. Whilst much of this previous purpose is removed and has been detailed much in the short room descriptions, I intend to add some of it back in when at the table through the use of environmental storytelling and incidental flavour.

The Crevasse (9)

The first place I added detail to this week was the crevasse which I mentioned last week. I already knew this existed and wanted it to add verticality to the dungeon, as well as an additional way to travel between levels of the dungeon. To this, I defined the depth this week, briefly described a rickety bridge across it that the orcs have added to enable them to control the far side more easily. Added that there are caves at the bottom of the crevasse, foreshadowing a future level of the dungeon to be done later in the year (without actually committing to where these caves exactly are, to give myself flexibility).

Kennels (10)

Decided that the orcs would have their own sizeable dogs that they keep as guard animals and to aid them in battle. This adds some variety to the orcs, as well as humanizing them somewhat. They keep their dogs in a kennel room, converted from its previous purpose by removing all of the previous furnishings, and adding a crude wooden fence to make a kennel area, which is covered in straw and has water and food for the dogs. The orcs care about these dogs, and have slaves take care of this area. In their carelessness in converting this room, the orcs have missed a hidden cache of treasure which is now beneath the straw, but maybe PCs will find it?

Garbage Pit (11)

Next door to the kennels is where the orcs get rid of their rubbish, whether that is food waste or bodies. This area of the complex lies close to the crevasse, and suffered damage during the upheaval. This becomes very clear here as the floor has collapsed into a sink hole, accessing a cavern on the level below which is home to a grey ooze. This creature has been trapped and simply exists in the watery cavern 15ft beneath the floor of the garbage room. This room has a foul stench, mainly emanating from the pit, and the floor here can be slippery, presenting a hazard to quick moving creatures.

Torture Chamber (12)

To complete the trio of potentially unpleasant rooms in a row, the orcs have also set up a chamber which is the home of their torturer, Nogugh. This orc is unpopular with the majority of his tribe, because of his interest in hurting other sentient beings for pleasure and religious expression. This chamber is his world, with an area sectioned off for his bed and belongings and the rest of the room is dedicated to the tools of his trade, including a full sized and working stretching table. The room also includes a small altar that allows Nogugh to make dedications to his obscure deity. Finally, there is a cage here, allowing a prisoner or too to be kept here so they are on hand for Nogugh.

Guard Room (13)

This large room is in the centre of the complex, and can be accessed from several chambers. It serves as a main throughfare to go from level one down to the 2nd level by a stone staircase. The orcs have started to explore the next level down and realised that it is dangerous so they permanently station guards in this room, as well as place a barrier across the stairs unless they are using them. Again this room contains a cage to keep prisoners in, although this has not been used so far. There are several tables and chairs here, plus a weapon rack allowing the guards to snatch up their weapons quickly, and one orc always has an alarm whistle to alert the rest of the tribe.

The Vampire's Quarters (14)

This hidden chamber serves as the home of the orc's nemesis, the vampire Moldun. There are two entrances to this room, both secret doors that remain undiscovered by the orcs. There are small holes in each door allowing the vampire to travel through them in mist form, enabling him to return to his casket without being easily discovered. The central chamber between the two hidden doors contains Moldun's casket, as well as his treasures and furniture to make this a comfortable place for him to rest and reside. Previously this room was a secure chamber that allowed the temple's senior staff to retreat to should there ever be the need, in effect a panic room.

Zhark's Chamber (15)

Just south of the orcs barracks (room 6b) is the room occupied by Zhark, a bugbear mercenary hired to act as a scout and assassin for the orcs. This room was formerly a priest's cell, so was stark and barren. Now however, it has been decorated to suit Zhark's tastes, with a pile of furs in one corner, a trapped chest containing his treasures, a table with bottles of strong liquor covering it, and some lewd tapestries hanging on the walls. The room has a strong scent of incense which Zhark burns habitually in his room.

The Effects of Dungeon23

I have noticed that by pushing myself to write something every day, I am finding my ability to write is enhanced. Now I am sure this isn't a revelation to most, but it certainly feels like it to me. For many years I have struggled to sustain writing for games, which has been a bit of a problem, as I am my groups forever games master. There have been several times of the past 8 years where I know I have run poor games, where I have done very little preparation and simply winged it on the night. Just this week I got some unsolicited feedback about a game I ran several weeks ago, and it proved invaluable, because it showed that I wasn't necessarily getting away with my lack of prep. Since I left teaching in the autumn of 2022, I have found that my motivation for prepping games, as well as my mental energy have been slowly returning. As this returns I find myself pushing to do more, and Dungeon23 has shown that by doing a small amount every day, I find more ideas coming to mind, and more motivation to get these things down on paper. There have been several days so far that I have added more than one room to the map, and the actual map has more rooms on it than write ups, allowing me to think ahead for what I am going to write over the next few days. 

In addition to still being full of enthusiasm for Dungeon23, I have also managed to produce a couple of one page dungeons, with differing amounts of detail on each one. I intend to go into more detail about these in future articles, but for now here are some previews of them:

The Isolated Cistern

The Hidden Cache

Both of these are for part of an ongoing campaign, but they are exactly the kind of thing I would have created last minute, with little thought and not enough detail to really be useful. Now I already know what they look like ahead of time, long before players go there. Again this is hardly revolutionary for anyone running RPGs, but it feels so good to actually be ready ahead of time, adding maps that appeal to me and also with enough detail that I can focus on adding flavour at the table, not having to worry about what the rooms look like, or adding environmental factors.

Looking Ahead

So going into next week, I can already see where the rest of level one of the megadungeon will go, and have been looking to fill in a wandering monster table for this level that ties in to the map. I will look to finish the table this week, as well as finishing the rooms that are already on the map. This will take me up to around the 21st of the month and leave me 10 rooms for the other section to this level. Then it is on to level 2!

A New Project - Dungeon 23

 

A New Project

It has been a long while since I have felt confident enough to engage in a long-term project when it comes to roleplaying games. However, late on in 2022, with both free time on my side, and also motivation to do something RPG related returning very strongly since my change of career, I was casting around for something to sink my teeth into that would satisfy my desire to do something creative that also proved useful in running RPGs. That is when I came across the Dungeon23 challenge. Originally posted to Twitter by Sean McCoy in December 2022, the premise is very simple. Make 1 dungeon room every day throughout 2023 and record them all in a journal. Every month you will start a new dungeon level and by the end of the year you will have a complete megadungeon, with 12 levels and 365 rooms in it. All you need to take part was a journal and some imagination (and maybe a random generator or two for when inspiration needs a little help).

 

Rhodia Journal

Inside the journal

This is exactly what I had been looking for, so I set about getting hold of what I needed (buying a journal that would work for what I needed) and then thinking up a concept that would sustain me throughout the year, or at least enough of a concept so that I could keep adding to it as I went along. I didn’t want to spend a lot of money getting a new journal, because I know what I am like for sustaining a project (even though I really am aiming to see this one through), but I also wanted something that was small enough to take with me should I go away, but laid out in a way that made it useful for notes and mapping. To this end I discovered these Rhodia notebooks, which come in a variety of colours, had decent paper quality and served my purposes well. I actually started making rooms and adding notes before the journal arrived, but transferred them over as soon as it arrived, and I have been really happy with this choice of journal so far.

As I write this post, I have just finished week one of the challenge and I am at actually 9 rooms, as there were a couple of days where rooms were interconnected or I simply had an abundance of inspiration. I have based the idea of my megadungeon around a hidden observatory built into a hillside, and dedicated to a god of the sky and heavens, but long ago abandoned. This observatory complex – cum temple delved down into the earth, reaching places best left alone, as well as connecting to distant planes. This gives me the justification in my own head for a wide variety of creatures to inhabit the dungeon, as well as allowing me to vary the environs beyond those found in a typical dungeon. This idea developed across the first week as I started to map out the rooms, and so I am hoping to build on this as the weeks and months go by.

Update 1 - Getting Started

Update 2 - More shading and more entries

The first level of the dungeon is focussed around the original observatory, so the rooms are themed around those that would feed and house the acolytes here as well as allow them to carry out their work. I added a temple dedicated to their god too, as this seemed to be a sensible addition. Several of the chambers that have been added on this level could potentially serve as additional ways into and out of the complex for smart or enterprising adventurers (especially if they are nimble!). I then added to this a crevasse that separates part of the complex in two, created by an earthquake at some point in the dungeon’s history. This was a way to add some verticality to the first level as well as allow creatures (and players) to move between this level and lower levels without just adding stairs in. It also serves to allow these same creatures to move down more than one level at a time by taking the dangerous climb down. This was something I was keen on the megadungeon having, and whilst it isn’t exactly a novel idea, it serves its purpose well and can also serve as a visual and environmental storytelling element for the dungeon, allowing the history of this place to be explored without simply performing lore dumps on players.

The primary inhabitants for this first level (currently) are a tribe of orcs who have taken up here to raid the surrounding trade routes as well as harass local settlements. The observatory provides them with a defensible redoubt, as well as keeps them hidden from the hated sun during the day in systems where orcs suffer from daylight penalties. The orcs have started to explore the complex since they occupied it, and have already started to tangle with other creatures that come up from lower levels: guard positions in the rooms split by the crevasse attest to the need to keep an eye on what ascends from lower levels. Alongside this, I have planned for some more powerful creature to be stalking the orcs in their rooms: I am yet to decide what this creature is, it could be a lich or vampire who have been in the complex for centuries, or it could be a horror from the depths, or some demon from an outer plane that the original priests accidentally let loose in the material realm. I want the dungeon to be something that feels alive and like it has separate communities of creatures within it, because this allow for players to engage in diplomacy and roleplay, rather than the dungeon simply be a slugfest where they go from room to room slaughtering all that stand before them. Do they co-operate with this powerful lone denizen? Do they negotiate with the orcs, or fight to force them to flee? What about any slaves or prisoners that the orcs have taken? I want this complex to present this kind of questions and challenges to players as they make their way through. Putting in a variety of intelligent NPCs and giving opportunity for players to exercise their roleplaying and character skills allows for much greater creativity on my part I feel, because I can start to craft a living environment built around groups with their own motivations, rather than simply making a shooting gallery of cardboard cut outs to be knocked down by the players as they make their way from room to room. Having NPCs that present a wider variety of challenges will also make for player choice to have a greater impact on their game, which makes for a more satisfying player experience in my opinion.

End of week 1

 

So far Dungeon23 has proven to be a fun challenge and has made sure that I keep the creative juices flowing, although it is obviously early days having only finished week 1. I have enjoyed the short burst of having to come up with a short entry that adds enough detail that I would be able to make use of it should I run the dungeon at the table. I have been posting updates to Twitter throughout the week as I progress and it feels really good to have the confidence to do so. I am aiming to post about my ongoing progress here too, to give a more detailed update and to put everything together in one place for easy reference too. Starting this project has also shaken loose a little bit of creativity for other ideas too which I hope to be able to write about and share over the coming days too. The great advantage to a project like Dungeon23 is that even if I do fail to finish the whole year, I have something tangible to show for the work I have put in, and it is something I can make use of at the gaming table, which for me is an important consideration. I can already tell that by committing myself to the project and physically doing something every day towards it I have something to show for it.

Over the next week I plan on adding in some rooms the orcs are using to house prisoners in, and figure out what my mysterious stalker in the dungeon is and where it will be placed. I may also look to add more entrances and exits to this level of the dungeon, as well as have some consideration for where the original (and current) inhabitants got water from. Where we find water, we find life and that could well allow for more variety as well as danger. I intend to go back over rooms I have already created and consider where there might be hidden caches, traps, or possible links to other levels too. I think that revisiting rooms may well make for a better constructed dungeon from a play point of view.

Hopefully this will be the first of many updates on progress, as I am excited to see what I can produce if I keep this level of creativity up. I am looking forward to what the rest of 2023 will bring!

Where I am with Magic the Gathering

The last thing I wrote about MtG was way back in January of 2015, around the release of Fate Reforged, coming up for 8 years ago. In terms of MtG this is effectively ancient history! Back then we were still in the times of the block structure, back before the current era of FIRE design, and back when Commander wasn't the dominant way of playing the game. I dropped out of the game within a year of writing that article, just too busy to keep up, and lacking the money to keep up with the products. I finally decided I would start selling off some of my unused expensive singles in 2021, and so started to put some up for sale.

One of the cards the got sold off

 Predictably, after a short while looking up cards and prices, I started to see cards I thought might be good for my favourite EDH deck, The Gitrog Monster. This quite quickly snowballed from me selling a few cards to starting to buy a few. This very quickly reignited my interest in the game, fuelled further by my son finding the game of interest and wanting to play. Fast forward to now in late 2022 and I would say I am once again fairly enfranchised, although I cannot keep up with the release schedule, nor can I keep up with the explosion of legendary creatures that are released in each set. I once started a series of articles ranking all of the eligible commanders on mtgcasualplay.com, which appears to now be a defunct website, and this was something that was reasonable to attempt back in 2015, if quite ambitious. Now, in 2022 trying to rank all of the eligible commanders seems insane! In the most recent set, Dominaria United, there are 41 legendary creatures that could be used as the commander of a deck, and that doesn't include those from the accompanying Commander products (which is another big change that has happened in the meantime). It is pretty clear how Wizards of the Coast are catering more and more for Commander, and the release schedule for products has also ramped up massively. So I won't be trying to resurrect my old series, even if my views and experiences have changed and grown, meaning I think it would be better written now and contain better insights. In terms of MtG content moving forward I intend to do a mixture of articles about the decks I have built or will build, as well as looking at products and cards as they come out. 

 

For the first time in my life, I find that I have someone to play regular games with: my son is now old enough to enjoy the game and be able to play it without having to require help most of the time. Although EDH is best enjoyed in multiplayer, we also play a fair number of games 1 on 1 and have a blast. I am not ashamed to say he can beat me about as often as I can beat him. I even intend to take him to his first Friday Night Magic this Friday at Asgard Games here in Walsall. He has even taken part in helping construct some EDH decks of his own, and those are pretty good fun to play against, with a similar enough power level to most of mine that they are an even game. You can check out the current roster below (all decks are stored at Moxfield)

My Decks

• Mono-Red Artifacts - Daretti
• Golgari Lands - The Gitrog Monster 
• Dimir Sacrifice/Treasures - Eloise, Nephalia Sleuth
• Orzhov Aristocrats - Liesa, Forgotten Archangel 
•  Mardu Reanimation - Alesha, Who Smiles at Death
• Golgari Elves - Lathril, Blade of the Elves
• Selesnya Vanilla Tribal - Jasmine Boreal of the Seven 
• Esper Lifegain - Oloro, Ageless Ascetic
• Rakdos Goblins - Wort, Boggart Auntie (a development of my very first EDH deck!)
• Naya Pump and Smash - Minsc, Beloved Ranger  
• Grixis Dethrone - Marchesa, the Black Rose
• Mono-White Tokens - Bennie Bracks, Zoologist

Billy's Decks

•  Dimir Zombies - Wilhelt the Rotcleave 
• Mono-Red Goblins - Krenko, Mob Boss
• Five Colour Superfriends - Garth One Eye 

It's quite a long list , and there are a few others that are kicking about that are in various limbo states, as well as a couple I don't actually enjoy but haven't gotten around to deconstructing. No doubt this will be added to and changed as I go along, but this provides a handy snapshot of what things look like as I write in October of 2022.

 

Everything I wanted in my last article on MtG!

As an aside for anyone who read my last MtG article, yes I did indeed pull an Ugin, the Spirit Dragon in Fate Reforged. See if you can spot it in a deck list!