Augmented Reality, Mars, and the End of the World: Speculative Fiction Set in 2026

Last year we reviewed speculative fiction set in 2025, comparing what creatives imagined in the past versus the world we actually got. So what about 2026?

A few notes on what I am not covering. There are a lot of stories that are too recent to be particularly interesting for purposes of this exercise. For example, there is a book (that I have not read) called The Future of Another Timeline, which apparently features scenes set in 2026. But it was published in 2019. Stories set less than 10 years into the future are really intended as “just around the corner” stories, rather than a prognostic leap into the unknown. There will probably be exceptions, but we’re most interested in stories imaging 2026 decades in advance.

Other projects just don’t have the narrative depth to produce an interesting post. I don’t think 2005’s Doom movie tells us much about the world of 2026 beyond “wow, what a difference 20 years makes in the kinds of roles and budgets Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson will accept.”

Finally, this exercise will obviously skew toward set-in-2026 content that appeals to me for other reasons. If it was on my reading list or my watch list, it's more likely to be featured. This is decidedly a personalized take, not a comprehensive or impartial one.

Now on to the fiction of 2026.

Den-noh Coil (released in 2007)

In last year’s fiction post, I wrote about Rainbow’s End, a story that is largely about children navigating the world of 2026 through the (literal) lens of augmented reality. Den-noh Coil has a lot in common with Rainbow’s End. It deals with a near-future 2026 where citizens of a Japanese town wear augmented reality glasses to view a virtual overlay on the real world. As in Rainbow’s End, augmented reality provides a parallel, invisible world, with its own conflicts and rewards, and children are the primary explorers of this world. The show was produced by Madhouse, a prolific studio that has recently adapted Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End to anime, but I hadn’t heard of Den-noh Coil until I looked it up for this exercise.

Like Rainbow’s Children, Den-noh Coil supposes that AR in 2026 is more advanced and more integrated into society than it is in real-world 2026, but it gets many details right. I won’t spoil too much, but the story takes folklore, ghost stories, and local superstition and reinterprets it through a new lens of technology. 

For example, the characters use “tags” to hack the virtual world; the tags look a lot like Shinto ofuda talismans. And the digital enforcers that serve as antagonists for much of the story cannot pass through shrine gates, much like mythological ghosts or demons. But the protagonist eventually learns that the real reason is bureaucracy; the shrines are controlled by a different ministry than the bureau that runs the AR tech, so the virtual enforcers come to a dead stop at the torii because of intergovernmental rivalries. This is a fun idea, and the series does a good job of exploring ideas of non-literal/superimposed spaces, a subject explored in both fiction (The City & the City, The Cartographers) and non-fiction (Unruly Places).

Other story beats feel prescient too, like a “bus graveyard” (implicitly the aftermath of widespread autonomous car usage ending public transit) and a scene where children have to figure out how to use a rotary phone.

Many aspects of Den-noh Coil's world are reminiscent of efforts by Meta and other companies to create value in the AR/VR space. The story's valuable “kira bugs” are like NFTs. The scavenger hunt aspect of the story, as well as the prominence of virtual pets, foreshadows 2016’s summer of Pokémon Go. Per Wikipedia, the founder of Niantic Labs, the company that powered Pokémon Go, is a fan of Den-noh Coil, so this may be a life-imitates-art situation. In a way, the only surprise is that today – 10 years after the peak of Pokémon Go – that feels like the exception, as a successfully monetized instance of AR, rather than the first of many such products in a full-blown AR world, as Den-noh Coil predicted.

Den-noh Coil is not perfect. In particular, the plot is unnecessarily convoluted, with much of the mystery delivered by monologue near the end of the show. But the worldbuilding and vibe are a great example of creators guessing what the world will be like in 20 years, and coming up with an answer that resonates with IRL 2026’s headlines.

There Will Come Soft Rains (published in 1950)

You can read this short story online, and doing so will only take a few minutes, so I won’t avoid spoilers here.

A lot of futuristic fiction is understandably vague about when exactly events takes place. So for purposes of this 2026-in-fiction exercise, I want to thank Ray Bradbury for explicitly specifying that this short story takes place on August 4, 2026. That’s today. 

This story is prescient in describing a “smart” home, complete with programmed alarm clock (“Alexa, snooze 20 minutes”) and automated vacuums that aren’t too different from modern Roombas. The story presumes a kind of analog infrastructure that is very different from our digital present, but the effect is quite the same. Bridge-and-martini night is a little quaint for 2026, but the vibe is right.

TWCSR is one of those classic stories that encourages the reader to think anew about nuclear annihilation by changing the frame of reference. We are introduced to an idyllic home. We gradually realize something is wrong. Where are the people who live in this home? The story adds clues until we understand we are seeing machine servants mindlessly performing the rituals of a civilization that is now dead.

I wish I could say that the story's warning of nuclear annihilation was a quaint relic of another time... alas, reader, I cannot. We can at least say we beat this prediction, but whether we have avoided this fate or merely delayed it remains to be seen.

Parable of the Sower (published in 1993)

I didn’t even realize I owned this; it was hiding on my bookshelf at home. Like TWCSR, Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower blesses us with explicitly dated chapters, beginning in July 20, 2024 and running through October 10, 2027. Written in an epistolary style as a teenager’s diary, the story begins in a small community in California that is struggling to survive as a combination of environmental, economic, and political disruptions leaves the United States teetering on the brink of collapse.

This is a society that is most of the way toward a true Fallout/Mad Max post-apocalypse, but the slide is slow and irregular, region by region, social group by social group. Government services are gradually failing and jobs are disappearing, but there are just enough remnants of normality that the people in the narrator’s community can cling to the hope that the world as they knew it will make a comeback. The narrator accepts that the old world is not going to return, and begins an ambitious plan to create new communities that can grow from the ashes of the old.

I’ve read and watched a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction, and there is much, much more of it that is set in the aftermath of the collapse, than the collapse itself. Most stories are more interested in the settled world after the collapse is done, or perhaps a back-and-forth with the pre-collapse world; The Last of Us, Oryx and Crake, and Station 11 all land in this space. There are a lot of signs of long-past suffering; and flashbacks that foreshadow suffering to come; but the show elides the actual suffering that a nuclear holocaust would bring. No shade on stories that go that route, but I appreciate that Parable grits its way through the ugliness of the collapse day-by-day. I was reminded at times of Blindness by José Saramago, which is perhaps the most unflinching and difficult societal collapse story I have read.

The protagonist's concept for a new community is a poetic, pseudo-religious idea called “Earthseed.” It begins with a humble self-organized community that she builds over the course of the book, but she has ambitious plans for civilization not only to regrow within a small holdfast in California, but to spread and grow even beyond the Earth itself. 

A manned mission to Mars is a plot point early in the story, and Butler wasn’t the only SF writer who picked the mid-2020s as a plausible period for Mars exploration. Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (which I shortlisted for this post, but didn’t get around to finishing) also takes place in 2026. I think these '90s writers were directionally correct on the Mars idea, just a bit early (like with the AR stuff).

Speaking of Mars, it is interesting that the most prominent real-world proponent of an Earthseed-like concept in real-life 2026 is... Elon Musk, who also wants humanity to extend beyond earth to ensure its survival. Butler’s protagonist is, uh, decidedly different from Elon in any number of ways. The passage of 30 years makes for strange bedfellows.

Parable of the Sower’s sequel, Parable of the Talents, takes place in 2032, so if I’m still doing this series six years from now, I’ll read it then. Butler had planned to write several more Parable books, but understandably needed a break from their heaviness, writing Fledging instead. Fledgling is actually the only other Butler book I’ve read, and while two books is not a pattern, it is hard to miss that both are about a female protagonist in the western United States setting out to create an intentional, interracial community.

Worldbuilding Takeaways

Den-noh Coil presents a parallel world with opt-in dangers. Those who ignore the AR world entirely are safe from it, but those who engage with it are subject to its dangers. This is a good model for how forbidden magic can work in a fantasy game, or forbidden knowledge in a mythos game. Ignorance is safety. If you get in over your head, remember that you opted in.

TWCSR works as a location you could drop into any post-apocalyptic game. It's one thing to say the bombs fell and everyone died, and quite another to make the players feel it. RPGs can’t replicate every neat trick that authors use, but they can set up a location-based mystery and let players add up the clues until the “ohhhh…” moment when they figure out what’s going on.

Parable is a heavier hang than most people are going to want in their Apocalypse World games, but I do think its ideas of community formation could inform tough decisions characters would face in such a setting. How do you decide who you can trust? How do you decide who has the skills and resources your community needs? What do you do when those two categories don’t overlap? 

Next year: the speculative fiction of 2027. Do you like long takes of Clive Owen running through gray British murk? Then you're going to love 2027. See you then.

Stolen Board Game Mechanic: Divide-and-Choose Spells

Various types of boardgames and card games include “I cut, you choose” mechanics. One player divides a quantity of tokens, or cards, or some other discrete game element into two piles, then a different player gets to pick among those piles, with the first player receiving the remaining selection. Like unchosen picks accruing value, divide-and-choose is interesting because it is self-balancing. The divider is incentivized to make as even a split as possible, unless they have access to information the chooser does not, or believe that the chooser is otherwise unlikely to pick correctly.

How could we apply this to D&D-style games? Consider divide-and-choose as a magic system.

Assume each spell has three major effects. The caster separates them into one pile of two and a remaining pile of one. The target of the spell can choose either pile.

For example, imagine that Fireball had the following effects: Area Effect; Fire Damage; Burning Condition.

The caster divides; they offer the target either Damage OR Area Effect + Burning Condition. The target is low on HP, so they take the Burning Condition and Area Effect, which spreads the Burning Condition to several of their allies. 

Video games provide plenty of ideas for effects. Area and range, damage increases, damage over time, all kinds of “debuffs,” poison or disease, fear and charm, and so forth. 

Some care has to be taken to avoid making one choice much weaker or much stronger than the others, such that the divide-and-choose would become trivially obvious. But this approach also makes it possible to add niche effects that wouldn't otherwise be "worth" including.

Consider a spell that forms a cloud with the effects Poison, Obscuration, and Coughing. The Poison and Obscuration effects are probably more broadly useful, and would typically be split, so that at least one would apply. But if the target is a spellcaster, and Coughing could prevent them from intoning arcane words, it might be viable to divide such that Coughing is alone and Poison and Obscuration are together, forcing the target to accept both Poison and Obscuration if they want to avoid Coughing and be prevented from casting spells.

A spell is not necessarily limited to three choices. A higher-level spell could involve four, five, or more choices. But we should be careful about how many we offer; too many choices and the divider will take too long picking their piles, dragging the game to a halt. 

D100 Places to Stay that Aren’t Generic Fantasy Inns

Adventurers in a typical vanilla fantasy game arrive in town and need a place to stay for the night. They get directions to the inn. You can readily imagine the inn that the DM improvises. It is familiar from many fantasy TTRPGs, video games, books, and movies. A rough-hewn fireplace, perhaps a full-ass hearth. A heavyset bartender, facial hair guaranteed. Some extremely provincial locals and workaday traveler NPCs gathered in a common room, perhaps with a musician performing.

Of course, that typical fantasy inn is an anachronism. It does not resemble anything that was particularly common in real medieval or renaissance settings. It is instead similar to the English coaching inn, which developed hundreds of years after the source period for D&D and most similar fantasy work.

That’s not a bad thing; D&D is full of anachronisms anyway. The game would not be improved by hunting down those anachronisms. But it does create an opportunity to brainstorm lodging options that add some more variety, particularly for a game that features a lot of travel.

Roll 5d20 for a result that will skew toward the middle of the list, where the (relatively) “normal” results appear. Roll 1d100 for a truly random result. If you’re wondering why the first few entries on this list are so gonzo, it is so they won’t show up at all on the more controlled 5d20 roll. Skip to the entries in the 50s for examples of the more conventional results.

1. Hotel of Dogs. Comfortable and well-appointed, but entirely staffed by dogs, who clumsily but diligently attempt to perform all the tasks of hotel management. They lack opposable thumbs, language, and other key tools of the hotelier trade, but try very hard. Polymorphed humans, or merely well-trained ex-familiars? No one knows.
2. The Terror Beast of Grottug Swamp. Spend an hour or two grooming ratfang ticks out of its fur, and it will perceive you as a cleaning mutualist. Sleeping curled up against it is about as safe as it gets, because everything else in Grottug Swamp is terrified of it. 
3. There Is No Anti-Memetic Hotel. Everyone forgets about this place shortly after checking out due to some ancient enchantment magic. The sensation is mildly distressing and confusing, and it makes it hard to find it in the first place. But it is relatively secure from any non-accidental discovery and attack.
4. Secure demiplane accessed by a one-way magical door. Reasonably safe from everything. The only catch is that you can only leave it by a different one-way magical door, and no one is sure where that door goes.
5. Enormous tortoise trundles across the landscape. Travelers gather in a house on its back. 
6. A gorgon will petrify travelers for the night, de-petrifying them in the morning. Locals will confirm this isn’t a trick. Pretty safe if true, but do you actually feel rested? 
7. Fane to a faded god, long ago the site of human sacrifices. Theurges have now bound the remnant deity and divert its remaining power to the local town, where it serves those who once served it. The emanating divine energy makes this a warm place to stay. 
8. Ongoing construction. Obsessive builders are hard at work on a megastructure of vague and mystifying origin and purpose. The builders will let you sleep within the completed parts of the structure if you spend a day of hard labor contributing to its construction. 
9. Valley of slumbering mists. Living things fall into a deep sleep at dusk each evening. The mist dissipates in the morning. Travelers here get a great night’s rest, and they won’t be bothered by any predators capable of sleep. Things that don’t sleep are a different issue…
10. Shade? A perfectly square area, 100 meters on each side, is shielded from the weather by an invisible, floating structure or object. Provides shade in the summer and shelter in the rain, but some travelers are understandably uncomfortable sleeping under it; it has been there as long as anyone can remember, but who knows if the magic will someday wear off, and whatever is up there will fall from the sky? 
11. The Endless Show. Sleep No More-style interactive theater. You are given a role and expected to stay in character. You can get some sleep, but expect to be woken up at least once or twice by dramatic happenings.
12. Abandoned giant termite mounds. Hollow like dead trees. Not enough room to lay flat, so you must sleep upright. Awkward but functional.
13. Tombs! Safe, dry tombs, at bargain rates! Rumors of a breakthrough in magical immortality research have forced cemetery owners to pivot and market their real estate for a different purpose.
14. The basement backrooms. Huge, underused space underneath the largest building in town. Damp and full of forgotten and worthless echoes of whatever is cherished and valuable up above. Probably connects to local dungeons. 
15. Murder mystery. A shriek in the night. One of the other guests in this sprawling estate is dead? Who could be the killer? No one is recovering HP or memorizing spells in peace until the mystery is solved. 
16. Pleasure gardens. Safe from harm, comfortable, plenty of food and wine… but will you ever want to leave?
17. Mush-room. Toadstools the size of cozy cottages. Come hungry. You have to burrow out the interior to create enough space to sleep for the night.
18. Faerie ring. Sleep here at your own risk, for this place is bound to another world… 
19. Gargoyles guard the abandoned chapel. A local scholar claims to know what kind of offering will appease them, allowing travelers to sleep safely within the chapel. Is it real, or is she scamming the unwary?
20. Quaint witch’s cottage. The witch is currently (1d6): 1. Hungry 2. Bored 3. Horny 4. Polymorphed 5. Wrathful 6. Not Home.
21. Hollow, egg-shaped stone structures. Step into one, and it will close and keep you safe for 777 minutes. Large enough to provide enough air for one sleeper. Can’t be opened early by any known means. Simple, secure, eerie, unnerving.
22. Capsule hotel-style tubes in a massive granite block. The tubes are eerily silent. More than 10,000 years ago this block was part of a prison complex meant to drive prisoners mad through sensory deprivation. The prison and its purpose is long forgotten, and now the permanent Silence spell merely ensures a good night’s sleep. 
23. Wealthy distant relative. What a surprise, it turns out the PC’s wealthy uncle, sister-in-law, or other relation owns a vacation dwelling here. They may take an interest in one of their relative’s companions.
24. Discarded giant’s helm, embedded in the landscape. Provides a cave-like space where every sound echoes sonorously. Despite age and wear, parts exposed to the air gleam brilliantly in the light each morning.
25. The Painted Caves of Cavinto. An ancient cave art site of stunning beauty and sophistication. The Painted Sisters who care for the site welcome all who appreciate its beauty. One of the sisters may decide to paint the portrait of a party member. If they are not finished by the time you depart, they will travel with you until they complete the work. 
26. Slopes of the dormant (?) volcano. Heat from the vents keeps the night’s chill at bay.
27. The traveling circus will provide safe and dry accommodations in exchange for contributing something to the show. Magical tricks, acrobatics, and strongman performance are obvious options for adventurers, but weirder ideas from the PCs are welcome. 
28. Offseason shacks. Whatever the fishers/hunters/punters use this for in-season, it isn’t in use now. Poorly suited to this season’s weather, but otherwise fine.
29. Cartographer’s guild camp. Free admission for anyone who can provide detailed descriptions of the areas they traveled through to get there. The longer the journey and the more they got lost, the better.
30. Romantic spa. The newlyweds’ suite is the only room available, and the owners are strict about only renting it to qualifying customers. They are licensed and willing to perform a marriage between two party members, for a small additional fee. 
31. Abandoned owlbear lair. Safe as long as the smell lingers and keeps other predators away. Probably not a good choice once the nesting season begins.  
32. Laboratory. You will be tested, examined, poked, prodded, quizzed, queried, then tested again. And finally allowed to sleep.
33. Well-guarded ksar. The worse the approaching dust storm is, the greater the ksar's obligation of hospitality compels them to accept travelers. 
34. Leper colony with extra beds. Shunned by the nearby town, but the “lepers” generally have non-contagious or non-threatening skin conditions. Staying with them is actually safer than staying in the nearby town.
35. Convent operated by the Sisters of Perpetual Quietude. No charge to stay, but all visitors must keep completely silent while there; violators are cursed (or so they say (or so they would say, if they could talk)). 
36. Clay furnaces. They fire the furnaces all day, then the residual heat keeps sleepers warm through the bitterly cold night.
37. Brothel. Yes, you can rent just a bed. But the upselling is intense. 
38. Crowded tenement. A stair landing or coat closet is considered a viable rental spot.
39. Blacksmith’s shop. The heat from the forge is nice, but watch out for the cinders and hot ash that can ignite fires long after the blacksmith has gone to sleep.
40. Workhouse. You can stay here, but you need to put in an honest day’s work, or participate in an impromptu musical number. Food, glorious food… 
41. Overhanging cliff forming a natural windbreak. A fire is almost always maintained here, and stories are exchanged, as exaggerated silhouettes dance upon the rocks.
42. All-night bar. I don’t care where you sleep, but you can sleep here!
43. Fishermen shacks. Hammocks made from fishing nets. You will smell like fish for at least three days after staying here.
44. House for rent. The owner will rent it at a rather low price, for any length of time. Suspiciously eager to close the deal even at a discount price. Something happened here…
45. Boomtown mining camp. Think Deadwood season one. Tents, communal campfires, ample gossip and carousing.
46. Communal sleeping quarters. Stretch of bare floor in the largest building in town.
47. Hayloft. Not fancy, but reasonably dry. Moo.
48. Hostel. At least one Weird and Extremely Extroverted Traveler is going to try to get you interested in Their Weird Thing, whatever it may be.
49. Bathhouse. It seems like some people never leave. 
50. Coaching inn. Yeah, this is the basis for the generic fantasy inn described at the beginning of the post. Make it over-the-top stereotypical. You can have one ordinary inn now and then, as a treat.
51. Hollowed out tree. Surprisingly comfortable. There are signs that a gang of kids may have once dwelt here, long ago. 
52. Cells in the local jail, currently unoccupied. Don’t worry, they won’t lock the doors. Worst-case scenario, you get kicked out at 1 a.m. to make space for bar brawlers.
53. Monastery hospitia. They have empty beds. If you can plausibly fake an illness or injury, it is a good place to sleep. Just don’t fake it too well, or they’ll insist that you stay for an extended period.
54. Combination hotel and tattoo parlor. You can stay for free if you get a tattoo advertising the place. 
55. Lumberjack camp. Residents are friendly but boisterous and earnest. Lots of men’s men going around shirtless, wrasslin’, and having a wholesome good time, just hangin' out with the boys. Hope you like flapjacks.
56. Under the bridge downtown. That's where I want to be. Watch out for rattagators. 
57. Nomadic campfire. Of course you can stay here, if you can perform an impressive FEAT OF STRENGTH.
58. Qanat or underground cistern. Built by some long-lost empire that once ruled the area. The water is clean and cool, but paranoid travelers claim they have seen large, shadowy forms swimming in the waters…
59. Couriers’ Mansiones. PCs who wish to stay there will be expected to demonstrate what important information they are carrying on behalf of which governmental entity.  
60. Endless party on a river yacht. Plenty of comfortable places to sleep amongst the revelry, if you don’t mind the noise.
61. Asylum. It is a coinflip between creepy horror movie nonsense and an orderly, clean, professional facility.
62. Lighthouse. Dry and secure but the lighthouse keeper is a little… odd. Pray the weather doesn’t keep you here more than one night.
63. Short on beds. It is an ordinary inn, but the biggest festival of the year is happening right now, didn't you know? They have instituted a two-to-each-bed policy. Parties with an odd number of members should expect a roll on a carousing table or similar to decide who the unlucky (?) adventurer will get paired with.
64. Restaurant. A few hours folding napkins or skewering dire weevils in the basement will earn you a spot to sleep in the back of the kitchen.
65. Chimneyheaps. Creep out onto the roof of the palatial mansions in the wealthy district and sleep against and around the massive chimneys, warm from the heat of fires below, stoked through the night by diligent servants. Just step lightly on the tiles, lest you alert a sleeping noble to your presence…
66. A halfling wagon train has stopped here. Friendly RV camp vibe. They will expect you to sing in the round with them. 
67. Wedding! So large and extravagant, they don’t even try to keep out the wedding crashers. You will be expected to bring a gift for the newlyweds. Everyone dances.  
68. Futons in Dave's creepy shed. Dave is as creepy as advertised, but also extremely harmless.
69. The king has decided to hold open auditions for those who desire a sponsor for their heroic quests. The city is consequently lousy with adventurers. Every inn is completely booked, even at high surge prices. Tinier and tinier subdivisions of space have been made available for rent. Look forward to paying a fortune for a thin strip of floor behind a sideboard, or an uncomfortable night’s sleep on a pile of onions (you aren’t allowed to eat the onions).
70. Dilapidated resort. Just barely still in business, a reminder of better times. The resort is known for (1d4): 1. Skiing / yeti avoidance 2. Diving for enormous pearls 3. Rustic backwoods charm 4. A regrettable incident that the staff will only whisper about.
71. Bandit camp. Risky option, but plausibly a safe place to stay if you can convince the bandits that you are not worth robbing. This one time, at bandit camp… 
72. Haunted manor. Comfortable, spacious, and free, but low level poltergeist activity throughout. The spirits can be placated with fine wine, witty bon mots, or a game of charades.
73. Old folks home. The only payment expected is an attentive audience for their long, rambling stories. Stories may include historical lore that is nominally relevant to the PCs, but the storytellers will inevitably focus on mundane details, and they will get annoyed when someone tries to steer the conversation in that direction.
74. Ramshackle beach hotel. Rooms are rented out around low tide. The proprietor plans to take the money and run before tenants realize they’ll be underwater at 2 a.m.
75. Thieves' den. Guild membership typically required to enter, but if you can “steal” a good night’s sleep here, they would probably be impressed. 
76. Exclusive club. Members only. Very difficult to find unless you know the right person. Members are charming, useless, status-obsessed idiots.  
77. Monkey hot springs. Give them gifts of fruit or they will steal your gear.
78. Fragrant greenhouse. Rumor is that the smell repels predators. In truth, the smell attracts an alpha predator, which frightens the other predators away. But the alpha predator probably won’t come by tonight, right? …Right?
79. Elven hammock commune. Hammocks are available really, really, really high up in the trees.
80. Junior enchanters academy. The apprentices are all practicing the Sleep spell, and need volunteer test subjects. 
81. Mercenary camp. This free company once roved the land, but have taken root in this particularly resource-rich and conflict-prone region. Friendly to adventurers, but will try to recruit them into their ranks, particularly young and impressionable (impress-able?) hirelings and henchmen. Each night there is a cumulative 5% chance that the local political authority launches a surprise attack on the camp. 
82. Dungeon basecamp. Not the dungeon your party is traveling toward, just some other dungeon along the way. The camp is (1d4): 1. Freshly set up for a delve that has not yet started 2. Occupied by adventurers licking their wounds 3. Only guarded by a few hirelings while the adventurers are inside 4. Abandoned ("found a mule"). 
83. Shrine of Revelations. Perfectly safe, dozens will seek shelter here every night. Every night, at least one person who sleeps here will be forever changed by a spiritual awakening, often a traumatic one. 
84. Bulette graveyard. Shells form convenient half-dome shelters. There is a small but very dangerous possibility that a dying bulette will show up during your stay and take offense at your use of its family’s shells as shell-ter. 
85. Cemetery. Make an offering to the dead that reflects what they cared about in life and enjoy a peaceful night’s sleep right there atop their grave. Monsters, animals, and even the weather will be repelled from the gravesite, if you get the offering right. The local historical society will pick the right offering for you, but they charge a high fee.
86. A deep well. At the bottom are muddy ledges surrounding the source of the water. Various moist intelligent creatures hang out at the bottom, loudly advocating the virtues of sleeping at the bottoms of wells, and encouraging passerby up above to come down and join them.  
87. Foxholes. Oh, you didn’t know there was a war? Get in this hole if you want to survive the night.
88. Scarecrow fields. The scarecrow here keeps more than crows away, so this field is a safe place to sleep. In the morning, there is a 1-in-10 chance the scarecrow takes a shine to the travelers and leaves its post to go with them. 
89. Toadstool hovel. Charming, bucolic, safe, and warm. Three months after staying here, visitors will emit clouds of spores that will eventually grow into new toadstool hovels. Otherwise harmless, but likely to anger hoteliers, who don’t appreciate the fungal competition. 
90. Sirens' rocks. An enterprising merchant sets up shop just out of earshot, selling wax earplugs. You can then approach the shoreline where the sirens sing. Your earplugs keep you safe from their song. Their song keeps you safe from bandits and vagabonds. You really have to trust the discretion of the earplug guy not to sell you out, though.
91. Huge sleeping monster’s gaping maw. Locals say it has been open like that for years, and no other monster will approach it, so it is probably a safe place to stay. Bold choice Cotton, we’ll see if it works out for them. 
92. Competitive sleeping event. Professional slumberers will watch you sleep to see if they can learn anything from your technique. No need to post a watch!
93. The dump. Raccoons run it. They will accept visitors, but are extremely raccoons. 
94. This is my hole! It was made for me! Whenever people travel past this ravine, the cliff face inevitably features silhouette-shaped holes perfectly sized to match each traveler. Save or crawl inside.
95. Pitcher-plant like pods that entice creatures to slumber in them with sweet smells. Harmless to the sleepers, but the plant devours any and all insects on the sleeper’s body as recompense. Travelers plagued by lice and similar parasites will actively seek these plants out. 
96. Serpent dream-harvester. (Relatively) friendly/hungry giant snake runs a well-kept bed and breakfast. No money required; harvests dreams are payment.
97. Mandrake’s Mystical Manse. A magical doorway provides access to an extradimensional space with lavish bedrooms and nourishing food. Travelers assume a powerful wizard once cast it and… forgot about it? Died? Plans to return someday?
98. The Infinite Library. A fine place to sleep if you can resist the temptation to read uncountable fascinating books. 
99. Crashed aerial caravel. Upside-down, ploughed into the earth, never to fly again, but the hull provides reasonable shelter. Music from a spectral band (standing inverted on the deck above those sheltering under its hull) seems to keep wild animals away, but wild magic can surge forth from the long-dormant engines at inopportune times. 
100. Tired of being tired? A wizard here will sever you from your dreaming self, for a fee. Trapped in a bottle, your dream-self slumbers constantly, while you live on without the need to sleep. Side effects may include (1d4): 1. Difficulty telling time, gradually getting worse until even clocks and calendars become gibberish. 2. Susceptibility to illusion magic, as the mind gropes for dream images it can no longer find. 3. Enmity of a powerful night hag, who sees your dreamlessness as a professional challenge. 4. Flatulence.

The World's Largest Rewrite: Diabolical Dwarves, Boorish Brigands, Sanguivore Squids

As described in my recent series of megadungeon posts, the world's largest rewrite monster series is pretty useful for generating monster ideas, so I'm returning for another batch of 10 to add to the pile. When this series is finished, we'll sift through it for the best monsters, and (if they are very good) we'll add them to our megadungeon.

 #126: Unicorn. You thought we were done with weird horses? We are not done with weird horses. 

OSE gives unicorns the “empathy with maidens” and “teleport” powers. The maiden affinity comes from myth, but I went down a rabbit hole (jackalope hole?) on the teleportation ability. It appears to originate with AD&D, possibly to give unicorns a countermeasure against players hunting and harvesting them. That would make sense, given Gary Gygax's focus on the benefits of hunting or capturing monsters.

The unicorn doesn’t really make sense as a prisoner in our dungeon-prison, and while it is lawful, it isn’t really a dungeon guardian. Rolling on the Monster Overhaul’s excellent “Dubious Methods to Lure a Unicorn” table, we get “a wounded Dryad.” The unicorn is here to help a dryad in distress. We haven’t rolled dryad yet in this series of posts, so we’ll revisit what exactly is going on when we get to that result.

#34: Dwarf. Are these dwarves prisoners, intruders, or guardians? We’ll just choose randomly, and we get guardians. OK, so a clan of dwarves is sworn to protect this place. They are comfortable underground, reasonably long-lived, and could repair structural damage to the dungeon, so they make sense for this role.

OSE suggests groups of dwarves have a leader, and we can use the Overhaul to detail this leader, and in turn, better understand these dwarves. OSE does not have dedicated entries for dwarves or other PC ancestries, but they appear under the general “adventurer” category. Rolling on the random tables there, we get “sloth” as a vice and “wealth beyond dreams” as a goal. So the dwarves delved too greedily and too... lazily. Our leader is Fingmir… Silverstone… no, no, absolutely not. Fingmir… Silverheart. He has blue and red heraldry and is a prophet (!). His specialty tool is “targeted poisons.”

The story becomes clear. The prison builders (celestials or other uncompromising lawful types) contracted a dwarvish clan to guard the prison. The dwarves’ commitment to the pact has weakened over generations, particularly as it became clear the prison builders either could not or would not deal with the progressive deterioration we’ve seen in other parts of the prison. The dwarves become despondent and lazy, and Fingmir, driven by greed, poisoned the previous clan leader, his mother, believing that she was hiding secret wealth from him. She was not. He is now trying desperately to figure out some way to get rich quick before his crimes (and lack of treasure) are revealed to the other dwarves.

#27: Dervish. The OSE bestiary is kinda wild. We don’t have time to unpack the layers of cultural misinterpretation that transformed an ancient Persian ascetic tradition to the “fanatical desert warrior”  archetype that Gygax and his successors had in mind. I guess it kinda gestures at condensing 2000 years of history, ranging form Parthian horsemen to Ottoman janissaries, into one pulp fiction stat block.

There are a few ways to do something more interesting with this entry, but I think keeping the idea of “lawful extremists” and throwing out the Orientalism is probably the easiest way to get something useful. We can use the knight entry from the Overhaul to add some new stuff in its place. The Overhaul tables give us the following.

Sir Guy Truthspeaker is a knight of middling renown who duels everyone he meets to develop his combat skills. He’s bedecked with weapons and wracked with religious doubt. His heraldry is azure, with a pale division and a lion charge surrounded by ivy.

We just had Dwarven guardians, so I'm going to make Guy and his retinue outsiders. They’ve come here on a religious quest, but Guy has doubts. Maybe seeing the state of the prison has shaken his confidence in the celestials. 

#83: Nomad. Yes, we’re rolling randomly, but as with the stone-adjacent monsters last time, the dice do like to suggest connective themes. So after an entry about dervishes, who wander steppes and deserts, living in tents, we get to an entry about nomads who… wander steppes and deserts, living in tents. We haven’t even gotten to the bandit/brigand pairing yet.

The Overhaul saves us once again. Whereas dervish was an excuse to use the otherwise-unrepresented knight entry, nomad points us to the Overhaul's barbarian category. Rolling on the random tables, we get “Dream-readers. Dour, fatalistic.” They want “Strong drink. Herbal distillations preferred.” They are led by Slagnar Urn, who is “feverish and ill, desperate.” 

So Slagnar is ready to imbibe a fatal dose of rare herbs that will take him on his dream-quest into the afterlife. He and his family are here to gather the necessary herbs. Unlike the gnolls and other intruders, they’re a much more practical faction for the PCs to cooperate with.

#119: Toad, Giant. This is the classic sticky-tongued ambush predator. We can drop them in the same general area where our other “freshwater invasive species” entries landed earlier. They dwell in a log jam in the “river” that is pouring through the roof of the dungeon, and they love to eat beetles, which they snag from the nearby swarms. The devil swine who run the area prefer human flesh, but aren’t above snacking on toads that intrude into their territory in search of beetles. 

#63: Invisible Stalker. OK, here’s a special guy. The invisible stalker is a flawless tracker and nasty ambush attacker. It has a clear fit with the dungeon theme, as a summoned creature deployed by the prison builders to track down and capture escaping prisoners. But as the enchantments that bind it have weakened, its behavior has grown erratic. The Overhaul directs us to elementals to cover the stalker. Rolling for air elementals, we get a motivation of “a sealed building or tomb opened.” So the stalker is now doing roughly the opposite of what it was originally employed, hunting guardians or aiding prisoners. We could include a random mood table, where the stalker -- if encountered multiple times -- is sometimes more cogent, completing its original duties, and other times rebelling against them.

#12: Brigand. I mentioned them when talking about nomads, so of course they showed up almost immediately. They have little distinguishing them from bandits, except that the brigands are fighter-coded, while the bandits are closer to thieves. We’ll use the Overhaul’s mercenary entry here, and worry about bandits later. 

Rolling on the mercenary tables, we get the Legion of Gold, led by William Osprey. They prize cleanliness and order! Apparently William’s astrologer-wizard started gibbering about “moondrops” and “silver rain” and ran off into the night, entering the prison in a delusional state. The mercenaries are understandably wary of following him in, but want to get him back, presumably because his magic is essential for some scheme they are pursuing.

They’re camped right at the main entrance to the dungeon. They’re more than happy to opportunistically tax adventurers coming out, or even outright steal from them (I think among the old-school megadungeons, it is possibly Rappan Athuk that is famous for brigands camping the front entrance?) Then again, the brigands could be merciful to adventurers willing to go back inside and find that wizard…

#127: Vampire. After a series of guardians and invaders, we finally meet another unambiguous prisoner. The vampire has a massive entry by OSE standards, mainly detailing all the classic folkloric vampire powers and weaknesses. Compared to some of the monsters with rather thin premises behind them, the vampire almost has too much to work with.

Fortunately, random tables can provide focus just as well as they can provide inspiration, and the Overhaul has a full three pages dedicated to the vampire. Ours is named Kirkstein, and they have a classic ruff, frills, and handkerchief aesthetic, with decadent indolence as their demeanor. Anyone who kills them is doomed to gradually become a vampire – that would explain why they were imprisoned instead of destroyed. They possess a sublime charm that makes them difficult to attack unless they are already hostile. Their favored follower is a giant albino snake!

#5: Bat. It keeps happening! Themed back-to-back monsters. We want our giant bats to hunt our giant beetles, so we’ll place them in the same region. Both the OSE and Overhaul entries are pretty minimal, but the latter gives us “pushing prey towards a cliff” as a reason to attack. The lefthand edge of our prison flowchart features a lot of wildlife and cave-dwellers, so there must be a broken precipice where the bats are chasing giant beetles, driver ants, boars, and the occasional terrified kobold over the edge, then eating them after they die from the fall.

#104: Shrew, Giant. In terms of monster detail, the humble shrew is quite a lot closer to the vampire than the mechanically generic human subtypes. Click that link and see how much this guy has going on. In summary:

• Insectivore 
• Burrower
• High morale (most beasts have 8; the shrew has 10)
• High movement (180/60, similar to a wolf!)
• Always wins initiative in the first round
• Ferocious; creatures with 3HD or less have to save or run away (the shrew itself is only 1 HD, but bugbears and harpies are fleeing in terror before its shrewful presence)
• Territorial 
• Echolocation 

OSE does not even mechanically apply the venomous saliva that allows some real-world shrews to paralyze their prey! You're leaving money on the table, OSE!

As burrowers, the shrews also help us create dungeon connectivity and emphasize how the space has changed from its original usage. I’ve recently been reading through Demon Bone Sarcophagus, which also demonstrates how a burrowing animal (in that case, a giant sloth) can provide navigational complexity that breaks up a very orderly, grid-based, built environment. Our shrew tunnels will be a useful navigational hack, but also dangerous for low-level characters to exploit; you do not want to get caught trespassing in these tunnels by a gang of ferocious, brave, fast, echolocating shrews.

Playing the Game of Clue as a Deckbuilder

In TTRPGs like Dread and video games like Balatro, we can see how a simple and familiar game concept serves as a "chassis" for a more complex or customized game. When you start thinking about games like this, it can be hard to turn those thoughts off. Consequently an offhand comment about what the game of Clue (aka Cluedo) would be like as a deckbuilder turned into the following.

Assume “standard deckbuilder” rules, wherever a rule is not otherwise stated. Dominion is a good baseline, since the turn procedure is straightforward. This version of Clue would require making a new deck of cards, for various reasons that will be obvious. But it could use the existing Clue board.

First you would need multiple copies of each suspect, weapon, and room card (collectively, clue cards). The specific amount would be determined after playtesting. Shuffle the clue cards and then distribute them evenly in piles between the nine rooms, face down.

Each player starts with some mix of Shoe cards and Magnifying Glass cards (10 total, proportion would depend on playtesting). They draw a five-card hand per turn, ala Dominion. Playing a Shoe allows you to roll the dice to move. Playing a Magnifying Glass lets you search the room you’re in. You can’t search the same room two turns in a row (place a token at the end of your turn to mark your last-searched room). There is also an investigation deck that is available from all rooms.

Searching a room allows you to draft a card from either the clue deck in that room, or the universal investigation deck. Cards acquired this way go in your discard pile, and then you later draw them as you would in any other deckbuilder. The clue cards don’t typically do anything until the “solving the mystery” phase (see below), although some investigation cards might care about them and leverage them as resources before that time. 

The investigation deck includes cards that do typical deckbuilder-type things (see below). Three to five cards (again, determined via playtest) are always available face up in a “market” next to the investigation deck; searching allows you to take one of these and replace it with a new card from the deck.

Solving the mystery: On any turn in which you have each of a suspect, weapon, and room card in your hand; and you are in the room in question; and no other player has a card in their discard pile that matches any of those three cards: you may play those three cards and declare the combination to be the answer to the mystery. Do this in the typical Clue style (e.g., "Professor Plum, with the Wrench, in the Ballroom"). At this point, any player may reveal and discard one of these three cards from their hand to “disqualify” your solution. If they cannot, you win the game.

Most of the investigation cards would be familiar to deckbuilder afficionados (improved movement, more searching, card draw, trashing unwanted cards, etc.) A few ideas for special cards particular to Clue:

• Snoop: Privately look at one other player's hand. Then draw a card.
• Clever Reveal: When a player proposes a solution, you may reveal and trash this card to search any one room’s clue deck; if you find a clue that matches any part of their proposed solution, you can add it to your discard pile (thus invalidating their solution).
• Rule Out: Choose an opponent; they trash a clue card of their choice from their discard pile.
• You’ll Never Catch Me: When a player proposes a solution that names your character as the suspect, you may reveal and trash this card. If you do, they do not immediately win. Instead, you win if you can reach the “x” spot on the staircase on the Clue map. The accusing player can stop you by reaching that spot first. Play continues as normal for other players. During your turn, you may discard this card to draw a card.

Possible issues:

• It may be too easy to reach a fail state where no one can win? Possibly clue cards need to be retrievable in some way, even after they have been trashed. A straightforward solution would be for trashed clues to go to the bottom of the deck.
• Movement around the board may not be incentivized enough?
• Optimal play may obligate competitive players to try to track too much of what they see in their opponents discard piles, particularly clue cards.
• The “you’ll never catch me” minigame may be too cute by half.
• Random card acquisition versus more filtering (e.g., "look at the top three cards of the clue deck, choose one, then shuffle") may need to be evaluated.
• Getting lucky (e.g., finding a room card in the clue deck for the matching room) might allow a player to win too quickly.

Another Card-Based Method for Wrapping Up a Campaign

TTRPGs provide a lot of assistance for beginning a game and a lot less for ending one. I’ve written before about using cards to wrap up a game. Late last year, we wrapped another game with cards. The situation was as follows.

• We were wrapping a multi-year game, and the PCs had finished everything that we wanted to address through conventional, moment-to-moment play.
• We wanted to "zoom out" from a typical session's focus and resolve some big questions without rolling the dice. 
• The PCs had two goals that were in tension with each other.
• We wanted to break the action into separate stages to define gradients of success and failure.
• We wanted danger, risk, or conflict embedded both in the individual stages, but didn't want any particular resolution to be too time-consuming.

For brevity’s sake, I’ll skip the in-fiction details and focus just on the mechanics of the process.

The PCs needed to get through 14 “phases” to achieve their two goals. To ensure we could complete the finale in one session, I used a timer, with the PCs compelled to move forward to the next phase. Each phase began with two face-down playing cards, which the PCs revealed when they began the phase. I had the 14 phases laid out on the table, and the two cards were placed in columns on either side of each phase.

In addition to the face value of numbered cards, jacks were worth 11, queens 12, kings 13, and aces were wild cards, worth either 1 or 14, at the players’ discretion. The gap between the numbers on the two cards indicated the danger of the current phase. A difference of 0-2 indicated minimal danger; 3-5 signified moderate danger; and 6 or higher suggests extreme danger. I had concepts planned for how danger might manifest in each phase, as well as some general danger-escalation tools that could be used at any stage.

To determine how well their efforts to deal with a dangerous situation were going, they could draw a card from the top of the deck and add it to either side. So if a 3 and a 9 were revealed for either side of the phase, creating a danger score of 6, and a player drew an additional card and revealed a 5, they could add it to the side with the 3 to bring that side up to 8 and the stage's overall danger margin down to 1. The six characters in play had three chances each to add a card in this manner, for a total of 18 among the group. To use one of these draws, the PC had to “flash forward” to one of three epilogue moments – one day later, one month later, and one year later.

Here’s the catch. In addition to resolving the danger of the present stage, the running totals of each column will determine if they players achieved one, both, or neither of their overall goals (separate from the danger in each phase). 

So the players needed to balance the phase-by-phase spread against the running totals for their two goals. These two incentives could easily conflict, where they needed to "make up" a difference in the overall goal totals by leaning into danger in some of the stages. The players in my game were actually forced to make the last stage much more dangerous for themselves in order to get their goal numbers to where they wanted them to be.

We handled all of this narratively, using NPCs, abilities, resources, and the flash-forward epilogue moments to interpret the results of the revealed cards. No dice were rolled during this session. But there’s no reason (besides time) that something like this couldn’t be used as a “progress clock”-style overlay on regular game action.

Difficulty 

I decided that a final difference of 4 or less would indicate both goals has been completed successfully, while 5 or more would involve compromising or partially failing at least one of the two goals. I didn't go too deep into calculating the odds here, but I think I was lucky that the cards provided some tension that forced them to act, as there is a non-trivial chance that the numbers on the cards could balance themselves too easily and let the players move forward passively.

Fortunately, it is easier to make this harder in one of several ways:

• Decrease the margin for success on both goals; for example, say that a margin of 2 or less is required to succeed on both goals, with 3-5 succeeding on the higher-value goal only, and a difference of 6 or more indicating that both goals fail.
• Set Aces to 14 only, rather than allowing them to be wild cards. 
• Remove the 2s, 3s, and even the 4s from the deck. The game will become swingier without the low cards, with more phases showing high levels of danger. 
• Allow for fewer interventions to add cards to balance out danger.
• Instead of measuring the success of both goals by the final margin, give the two goals separate (and conflicting) success states. For example, one column could succeed on a high score, while the other could succeed on a low score. This would essentially force the players to choose one over the other, partially influenced by the randomness of the cards. 

But Why Tho?

To some degree this is just a different way of getting to what is really just a progress clock or skill challenge. Dice could simulate this in a way that is closer to the conventional game action. 

But I think there is something for switching systems entirely to frame an epilogue. After spending an entire campaign rolling dice to resolve moment-to-moment action, the cards signposted that the resolution system here was going to be different. 

The cards also provided a good visual centerpiece for the session. When I run games in person, I'm mostly happy to do it with few maps and props. But I have noticed that players benefit from having a shared visual thing to look at, particularly when the session has a very specific shared objective like this. 

The Prison Megadungeon: Doors as Exploration Complications

As we discussed in our first post on megadungeon influences, we want to place a heavy emphasis on complicating exploration. Doors are one of the best places to trigger complications. They provide a level of consistent friction; remind PCs of the danger as they move further from the safe center; and ensure that time and choices matter. One adventurer speaking to another might describe their delve not by how many feet they moved away from safety, but by how many doors they traversed (“I was 13 doors deep, I thought I would never make it back”).

For now, we’ll set aside exploration complications actively created by factions, NPCs, and monsters. We’ll return to those later, but we want to first focus on friction that is more endemic to the dungeon itself, as a place. 

We can escalate exploration complications gradually. This is not an exhaustive list, and we will add to it as we go, but it is enough to get us started. 

Stuck Doors

Using old-school logic, and assuming that doors are always potentially difficult to open (even if unlocked), and always in danger of shutting behind the PCs (even absent antagonist action) really changes the way they navigate the space. Many players (especially modern-style players, but even many old-school players) will start to move very confidently once they’ve decided that speed, stealth, or magic has permitted them to do this without consequence. Stuck doors that follow this logic call that confidence into doubt.

Stuck doors are the definition of a soft barrier. Players can always attempt to force them, and they can typically be destroyed as a last resort. But this is going to be noisy and time-consuming. So a stuck door is typically a choice: risk noise (and resulting random encounter/events rolls)? Or explore in a different direction and hope to find another way? 

We’ll want to ensure that the earliest parts of our dungeon present a lot of soft barriers like stuck doors near Jaquays loops, so that the players engage with this kind of choice early and often.

Secret doors. Secret doors are also a type of soft barrier. Whether adjudicated purely through investigating the fiction, or through the x-in-6 odds of some old-school games, or by ability checks in modern games... there is very little stopping PCs from finding secret doors early.

As with stuck doors, secret doors only make sense in tension with time. Absent time pressure, PCs can brute force the search for secret doors. But in tension with time, the PCs will have to choose where to search, and in a well-designed dungeon, that incentivizes engaging with the factions and history of the dungeon, and deducing the nature of the space.

Deployed intelligently, secret doors (like stuck doors adjacent to Jaquays loops) multiply the choices for exploration. They provide shortcuts to new, dangerous areas, and new routes to loop back to earlier areas. They are a risk, and an opportunity.

Thracia has important secret doors on the first and second dungeon levels. Whether or not the PCs find these doors can radically change their experience of the dungeon. Arden Vul supercharges this idea; listening to the 3d6 DtL actual play, and reading different play reports, it is clear that discovering (or failing to discover) certain secret doors at certain times creates a completely different dungeon feel. Any megadungeon can feature an arbitrarily large number of rooms, even in excess of Arden Vul’s massive total. But a megadungeon will feel huge not because of some arbitrarily high page count or an abstracted decision to include all the monsters, but instead through the depth of the verisimilitude created by the factions, history, and exploratory friction of the space.

Even moreso than stuck doors, we’ll want to advertise secret doors early. Old-school players may intuitively know to look out for them, but players new to megadungeon play may not realize this is something they should be looking out for. Fortunately, there are easy ways to telegraph this in the first series of spaces the PCs explore. 

So early on, the party should find some or all of the following:

• “The back side” of a secret door that is only hidden on its “front”
• A damaged or ajar secret door
• Tracks or other disturbances that provide a strong clue to a secret door
• An antagonist who “disappears” after fleeing into a space without any other obvious exits (this is a classic trope from fiction that is fine to deploy in games as well, as long as it happens organically, and isn’t a forced “despite your best efforts, the villain escapes!” cliche)

Locked Doors

A locked door is a hard barrier at the beginning of an adventure that gradually becomes softer as the PCs become more powerful or acquire more tools (literally or figuratively). It is interesting that for a party with a skilled thief, stuck doors will eventually become more of a barrier than locked doors, flipping the two in the hierarchy of barriers.

Locked doors should be liberally spread around the dungeon, but not all locked doors are created equal. We can use the following kind of classifications as a starting point and expand from there. As with landmark-hidden-secret and our three tiers of maps, we can use the rule of three here to make this easy to remember and systematically resonant.

Common lock. A common key could open each door with a common lock in the local dungeon area. Keys of this type may be found in all kinds of places. Easy to pick.

Uncommon lock. A unique key opens only this door, and there are probably three or fewer copies of that key. Typically they’re in the possession of a unique monster or named faction member, or stored in a secure location. Moderately difficult to pick.

Rare lock. A unique key opens only this door, and there is only one copy. Typically in the possession of a major monster or a faction leader. Highly difficult to pick. 

Of course, not all of our doors need to be generic dungeon “doors.” We can think of doors as all soft and hard barriers in the dungeon. I really like this kind of post for diversifying locked doors. The virtue of a d100 table is that after the writer burns through all the easy, obvious choices, they have to really work to keep going. It’s easy to get 30 or 40 entries, then a lot of work for the next 40 or 50, before a burst of its-almost-over energy takes them across the finish line to 100. I’ve written a couple d100 posts and found them to be quite productive.

One-Way Doors and Portcullises

Really anything that creates a barrier after passing through a previously traversable threshold. These operate like more extreme versions of an ordinary stuck door. They are much harder to force or destroy, so they strongly incentivize exploring in another direction. Some of the most exciting parts of the aforementioned 3d6 DtL Arden Vul podcasts were the episodes in which the PCs had to explore in an unexpected direction because something prevented them from backtracking. One-way doors, portcullises, and similar barriers are a good way of organically seeding such moments.

One-way portals present good opportunities for counterplay. Stuck doors can be leveraged with Hold Portal or iron spikes, and possessing a key can do the same for a locked door. But one-way portals typically present more an immediate opportunity for tactical exploitation by the PCs.

Teleportation

Eventually the physical constraints of the map – and the distance between points of interest to the PCs – can begin to complicate exploration. It is simply not realistic to traverse from one side of the megadungeon to the other, unless we abstract the time (and random events) involved in doing so; at which point the fundamental currency of the megadungeon has failed. Teleportation offers a more advanced, high-stakes version of the loops and switchbacks that the simpler barriers and obstructions presented earlier. 

Arden Vul again models this well. Early on, teleportation is experimental, risky, even potentially deadly. In 3D6 DtL’s Arden Vul campaign, the group’s earliest experiments with teleportation got them in over their heads, and led to PC deaths. By the end of the campaign, mastered teleportation features were critical to completing the party’s goals.

The more the dungeon’s logic and history is understood, the more teleportation becomes an essential way to return to safety and recover crucial resources.

Architectural Manipulation

I must admit that I am personally not a fan of these types of obstructions. Early D&D is awash with disorienting constructions. Building a spinning room or a maze of halls that lead nowhere, simply to confuse adventurers, is fine for a funhouse dungeon. And yes, it is interesting to frame such features as a kind of cultural flex of the dungeon-creators-as-retired-adventurers, hazing the next generation with their deceptively sloping hallway.  

But I’m fine leaving these kinds of features in the past. The DM has essentially limitless ability to obfuscate the nature of the physical space – and even without ill intent, it is easy for a lot of these manipulations of the physical space to become a game of “guess what the DM is thinking.” 

The shared fiction of an imagined space is always fragile, and my old-school hot take is that the ICI doctrine is a clear improvement on this aspect of traditional play, which was probably always best-suited for tournament play and one shots with a similarly adversarial spirit. In my experience, dungeon exploration sings when the problem is readily apparent, but the solution is not. 

Keys as Major Treasure

How valuable is a key as a form of treasure? It depends on how much friction there is in dungeon exploration. Consider the following common options when adventurers encounter a locked door.

	Time?	Noise?	Evidence?	Trap?
Pick the Lock	Y	N	Typically no, although a serious failure might leave a broken piece of a tool stuck in there	Probably yes
Force the Door	N	Y	Probably yes. Definitely yes on close inspection	Depends on the trap; a lockplate-based trap like a poisoned needle might be ignored, but anything in and around the frame and threshold of the door is probably going to go off
Destroy the Lock or Door	Y	Y	Obviously yes	As with forcing the door, it depends on the mechanism of the trap
Use Magic	N	A bit (verbal components of the spell)	Typically no	Typically no
Use a Key	N	N	N	N

Keys, like maps, are deeply undervalued treasures, if dungeon exploration is treated as genuinely difficult and dangerous. Possessing the right key is better than magic; no need to speak aloud, no spell slot required.

Backtracking and Level Connections

“One of the most important elements of megadungeon design is that players have direct access from the entrance to many different parts of the dungeon. Otherwise, every single session begins with the party moving through the exact same set of rooms, which can be difficult to prevent from becoming tedious. The elevator shaft means they have 6 choices for what their first room will be each session. In a more traditionally themed megadungeon a grand staircase would work just as well.”

I felt this when I ran Thracia. There are areas on the first and second dungeon levels in Thracia that my players had to traverse multiple times. Yes, you can and should repopulate previously explored areas with new monsters and threats, and reassess how faction activity has changed over time. But it was hard not to do this without creating friction, when both my players and I were really focused on getting the action to new, as-yet-unexplored rooms. In our discussion of barriers above, we already covered how we should reward exploration with shortcuts, new loops, and new paths for future outings.

But we can go bigger by providing a central and recognizable connection between levels that can be accessed from different places. Arden Vul has a chasm. The Papers and Pencils example quoted above uses an elevator shaft… and we already have a shaft in our dungeon, don’t we? So the most direct way of creating this kind of loop is to provide one-way doors accessible from the “upper” dungeon levels into the shaft (remember, our PCs generally want to go up, so our dungeon is inverted). In addition to providing shortcuts back to the starting point, these measurably and visibly bring the PCs closer to their goal of escape.

In summary, we want to ensure that all our exploration complications are doing at least one of the following things, and ideally more than one at once:  

• Creating friction
• Making time matter
• Forcing backtracking via a different route
• Rewarding investigation
• Spotlighting keys and maps as high-status treasure
• Providing shortcuts back to the “home base”