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!