A Multiversal #dungeon23
I really admire the people who’ve known exactly what they want to do for #dungeon23 for weeks, and have already made battle plans. I only have the vaguest of idea of what I’m going to do at this stage, but I’ll share it anyway. If nothing else, it’ll give me some space to think it all over.
Adventure of the Month / The Meta Dungeon
I do not trust myself to keep working on the same dungeon, setting, and atmosphere all year long. My brain’s much too fickle for that. I think I can keep it interested for a month though, so the plan is to make twelve connected dungeons, each one for a game/setting/genre.
They will of course be usable separately, and I’ll definitely run them like this. I’d like it to be possible to run a multiversal campaign with characters plucked from alternate dimensions, or as some weird-ass evolving dungeon. I’m thinking that a lot of us are itching to run these games we’ve read and put back on their shelf. One-shots aren’t always easy to sell to players, but what if you started with a game they liked and gave them a choice of settings to explore without having to make new characters and getting infodumped on?
Big List of Dungeon Ideas
In no particular order, here are some possible games/universes and ideas for each of them. I might incorporate seasonal themes or use some of the spark words lists out there.
- CY_borg: corp execs apocalypse bunker, abandoned offshore resort, nanocult slum
- Death in Space: abandoned research station, forgotten asteroid gem mine
- OD&D Blackmoor-like: sunk spaceship, haunted military camp around a wizard’s abode
- GOZR: sorcerer’s tower which is also a tactical missile, Angry Sun cult ziggurat
- Secret ‘Perpendicular Dungeon’ project: underworld prison/mine, take back the dwarf fortress!
- Dungeon, Inc: (aka Donjon & Cie) test level gone wrong, admin section taken over by residents, hostage situation
- Under the Lost City: temple of Zargon in Cynidicea, the whole underground city, module B4 after Zargon’s demise
- Folklore Bestiary Land: (using only monsters from AFB) a valley crawl in Pyrenean folklore, caves of the laminak, castle of the immortal Cathars
- Mörk Borg: (possibly somewhat parodic) cemetary or catacomb, twisted two-headed archangel cult, Bläck Mëtäl Cïtÿ
- Black Sword Hack/Storm Kingdoms: haunted fortress-ship, Dominion of Might palace, sea elemental iceberg or shell palace, pirate town under siege
- Mousquetaires X: (Golden Century with superpowers) ballroom crawl, battlefield at La Rochelle
- 1920s Occult Paris: opium den or absinthe distillery run by devil worshippers fighting off Something Worse, fallen angels run anarchist hideout
- Into the Odd: underground slum quasi-dungeon, impossible building made of mirrors, mockery factory
- Feng Shui 1: The Prof’s Netherworld hideout, 1850 temple/training camp, 69 AD ghost forest
- Rêve de Dragon (oneiric fantasy): nightmare vineyard village, volcano of the human milk cheese-making sheeple, dream-logic classic dungeon
- Dreamlands: Ghoultown, Kadath something something, or I could steal from Ben L ;)
- Dungeonville: rework my die-drop-and-trace template for a more easy to use format (keep for a low energy month ;)
- Goblinburg: make an encounter or place from some of the 70-odd illustrations Didier Balicevic kindly drew for me in 2020 and I could never use
- Under the Palace of the Vampire Queen for some. What if there were a seventh level under the queen’s tomb? Twould be a fun way to experiment with randomly stocked rooms.
And who knows what game or adventure released next year will inspire me? Some of these are oviously easier to imagine, while others would need research and extra work which I probably won’t be able to do. Feel free to be inspired by any of these ideas!
As I did for Dungeonville, I’m hoping I’ll be able to reuse/rework/update some of my old dungeon design templates and procedures ideas. I might write about these next.
Afterthought: I will of course allow myself to keep working on projects from previous months if I it needs more detail. Or skip ahead to something else. The idea is to make it easier for my foggy brain with options and creative contraints, not to create more hassle.