#Dungeon23 - 4 Days in. Thinking about the process.

I've decided to join in on the fun, and do the #Dungeon23 challenge.

I've never made dungeons before. I've always relied on published materials, as the idea of creating my own thing felt very overwhelming. But when I read the original blog post about it I realized that I was way overthinking it:

Sean McCoy's post on Dungeon23

It was really nice of him to say that "3 Orcs. 25 gold pieces" is acceptable, because my brain definitely needs the out to do that once in a while if I'm actually going to do this every day. That being said, I'm not going to make a lot of rooms "3 Orcs. 25 gold pieces" because:

1) my brain would absolutely not let me get away with that even if I wanted to

2) if my imagination gets sparked at all, I'm almost certainly going to be Googling "what you'd find in a medieval person's trash" at 2am.

In short: I'm either lazy, or I go overboard. But that's okay. We're going to work with that.

All we really need here is some good advice about design, and flavor. Ben Milton from Questing Beast has a ton of good links in his video about it (and his newsletter had a ton more). Highly recommend:

Questing Beast on Dungeon23

I've been using my collection of OSR .pdfs as an endless source of inspiration, and this neat article over at "Into the Dark" is keeping my mind thinking about good design:

Into the Dark - Bryce Lynch's Adventure Design Tips

I really don't want to disappoint the paternal caricatured version of Bryce Lynch that lives in my head.

To that end, I made a system of sorts for designing dungeon rooms. My goal was to come up with some guidelines that I could use to create dungeon rooms with minimal effort, by focusing on the most important and impactful information I could give to a player, and making sure the process is fun for me. This is what I've got so far:

• Not something rigid. If it's too rigid it won't be fun to explore and will get boring after a while. It won't be surprising, mysterious, interesting, etc.
• Nothing too random, either. It needs to make sense, and not just be a weird hole in the ground full of disconnected rooms that all look totally different, with a bunch of random shit in them, and monsters that all live next to each other but never interact.
• The design of each room needs to be something that I could sum up in a few highly impactful, flavorful sentences upon entry. Then, there are further sentences that can be used to describe things in more detail should the PCs choose to explore the space and its contents more thoroughly.
• The description should probably occur in the order that a normal person would notice the things. In other words, start with the most obvious things about the room, and work my way down.

I think the process of describing the room and designing the room should be fairly similar, because that's how our brains decode a space and organize the information. Maybe something like this:

• What do the PC's:
• see?
• Is there light? Either way, this is probably the first thing people notice.
• smell?
• Most primal sense. Smells always take priority, if there is one. Especially if it smells like something died, or is on fire.
• hear?
• In the absence of sight, we tend to rely on this.
• feel?
• Not always important, but changes in temperature, moisture, or air movement tend to raise our level of attention.
• taste?
• Probably almost never going to happen, but certainly memorable if it does.
• Is there anyone or anything else here?
• Our brains always look for friends and foes.
• Are there other entrances/exits? If so, are there doors? If so, what are those like? Are they locked?
• We always want to know how to get out, if something goes wrong.
• Then we start taking in details about the room itself.
• What are the walls like?
• What is the floor like?
• What is the ceiling like?
• Is there furniture?
• Are there other noticeable items?
• What does it seem like this room is used for?

That last one is actually more important than it seems, however. It's the key to the rest of the process, even though it's last in the description. If a room has a purpose, then it's easy to decide what it should look like and contain. I really wanted to add cool details to the room descriptions, but I was getting super tripped up by the amount of things that I COULD describe. Doors, walls, floors, altars, ceilings, boxes, furniture, rugs, art, etc. etc. And that's to say nothing about monsters, what the monsters are doing, whether there's anything ON the monster.

I was getting very overwhelmed, which is exactly how I wound up creating this process, and exactly why that last item on the list is so important. If the dungeon itself makes sense, then the things in it will fall into place. At least, in theory.

Here's the one I did for today (yes I know I started early, I got excited):

• What do the PC's:
• see?
• You descend a narrow set of stone stairs cut roughly into the cliff-face in switchbacks. At the bottom, you come to a three foot wide, ten foot long stone platform. To your right, the ocean crashes only feet below. Ahead of you and to the left the platform comes to the edge of a cavernous natural entrance carved into the side of the cliff by time and the elements.
• Inside:
• the cave is high enough and wide enough to contain a large sailing vessel, though you see only the broken remnants of a mast jutting crookedly out of the water inside. The platform comes to a ladder made of planks nailed to the side of what looks like a wooden pier where a boat could dock.
• In the water: moonlight glints off of various objects at the bottom of the pool, the details obscured by the rippling waters. You also notice what appear to be cylindrical cages with chains attached to the top, that appear to have been attached to large iron hooks on the ceiling long ago.
• smell?
• You smell salt air, rotten fish, seaweed, and a faint whiff of burnt wood.
• hear?
• Outside the cavern: you can hear the crashing of waves.
• Inside:  you hear the water lap against the stone sides of the cavern, and drip from the stalactites into the dark depths below.
• feel?
• A cool breeze seems to pull you ever so slightly into the cave, and through the rusted iron portcullis to what lies beyond.
• Is there anyone or anything else here?
• Under the water lies a giant octopus, unfed for years. If the PCs feed it: its old training will kick in, and it will pull a hidden lever that raises the portcullis with a grinding and screeching of rusted metal. After one hour spent in this area, if the PCs don't figure it out on their own, they will start to notice signs of it: tentacles feeling around places they have stood, giant eyes looking at them from beneath the water.
• In the ceiling, nesting amongst the stalactites, is a swam of bats. Their guano is visible on the floor, and the stalagmites that stick out of the water. They will erupt from their places of hiding if the PCs make any loud sounds. This will also get the octopus' attention.
• Are there other entrances/exits? If so, are there doors? If so, what are those like? Are they locked?
• Portcullis. Rusted, and shut. On either side are two very old wooden barrels filled with sand, with rusted metal torches on long iron poles driven into the sand.
• On the far wall opposite the pier there is a natural stone archway 10' wide, with natural stone steps leading upwards,  Leads up to the lighthouse, where a giant ruses brazier with tentacled legs holds ashes and charred wood. 15' x 15' natural stone floor and walls, opens out to the ocean
• We always want to know how to get out, if something goes wrong.
• Then we start taking in details about the room itself.
• I've already answered all of these questions:
• What are the walls like?
• What is the floor like?
• What is the ceiling like?
• Is there furniture?
• Are there other noticeable items?
• What does it seem like this room is used for?

That's enough for now. Fun to think about, but starting to feel tired in my brain. I started writing this, but I'm going to come back to it in the future:

Now here's the tricky part: how would this look on a page, and how do I make it take up as little space as possible? Seems kind of big. Hard to imagine an entire module with all that detail (even though I really like it already).

Here are the individual elements:

• You descend a narrow set of stone stairs cut roughly into the cliff-face in switchbacks. At the bottom, you come to a three foot wide, ten foot long stone platform. To your right, the ocean crashes only feet below. Ahead of you and to the left the platform comes to the edge of a cavernous natural entrance carved into the side of the cliff by time and the elements.
• Inside, the cave looks spacious enough to contain a large sailing vessel, though you see only the broken remnants of a mast jutting crookedly out of the water. The natural stone platform you stand on end at the side of a wooden pier, with a ladder made of planks nailed its' side.
• The wooden pier covers the three cave walls, and is about 15' wide. Facing the cavern entrance is a closed portcullis. It is rusted and salt-encrusted. On either side are two very old wooden barrels filled with sand, with rusted metal sconces on long iron poles driven into the sand. The sconces are styled to look like tentacles wrapping around a torch.
• On the far wall opposite the pier there is a natural stone archway 10' wide, with natural stone steps leading upwards.
• Leads up to the lighthouse, where a giant ruses brazier with tentacled legs holds ashes and charred wood. 15' x 15' natural stone floor and walls, opens out to the ocean.