Planning (and not Planning) for Dungeon23

What Is Going On Here

Early in December, Sean McCoy, creator of Mothership, proposed a challenge: 365 rooms and 12 levels of a megadungeon as a day-to-day journaling/creation project. 

I have a great affection for megadungeons. I have run them: a modified Caverns of Thracia sat at the heart of the beginning scenario in the five-year D&D game I ran, which ended earlier this year. And I have created some as well (although not finished them; more on this later).

Megadungeons trace a path straight back to the origins of the hobby. They tell strange, hidden, incomplete stories. They are surprisingly malleable and can facilitate different types of play, in place of (or in addition to) the classic crawl. They still loom large in popular culture beyond D&D; “Souls-like” and “Metroidvania” videogames are in many respects driven by the same principles (and tapping into the same excitement) that animated the first megadungeons 50 years ago.

Every fantasy RPG should have a megadungeon somewhere within it, and many games beyond D&D could benefit from a megadungeon or megadungeon-like space within their worlds. So we will create a Dungeon23 megadungeon, and we will start on January 1st. How will this work?

Dungeon Principles

A rough draft (until it isn’t). Other Dungeon23 participants have invested in fancy notebooks, written extensive background information, and created elaborate art for their project. This is great, and I salute their respective processes; but mine will be different. For me, a day-to-day project should be part rough draft, part sketching on a bar room napkin, part scrapbook, part Pepe Silvia diagram. I want to start with the humblest of possible beginnings. We’ll leave room for the loftiest of ambitions, but those ambitions aren’t helpful to getting started, and indeed are the most likely early stopping point.

Falling behind (and catching up). Rigid every-day schedules are the bane of new year’s resolutions and shared creative projects alike. We’ll endeavor to form a rhythm when possible, but we forgive ourselves in advance, understanding that the first lapse doesn’t kill the whole project, and a burst of energy that populates a week’s worth of rooms in an hour won’t be the norm.

Use the generator (then refuse it). Our random generator (see below) is a valuable tool, but it merely advises us. We can reject, invert, contest, and contort its advice at any time.

All misfit toys are welcome. No failed campaign notes, unused session prep, or aborted Itch.io publication is ever wasted so long as it could still rise again, animated by dark necromancy, to become part of a new project. One or more of my past projects will surely be absorbed into this process.

System and setting agnostic (until it isn't). I think this will be in some sort of D&D milieu, and I will  probably use (and advance) the stat block principles I've talked about previously, but this is also intentionally fuzzy at the outset. 

Grappling with Physical Media  

I normally create everything digitally. In the spirit of this project and in the interest of shaking the routine tree to see what comes loose, I’m going to do this by hand (to start… we’ll see…) After all, actually using a few of these notebooks that have been living in (colonizing?) my house for years is part of the appeal of doing the project. I’m going to start with this nice, concise 48-page graph paper memo book. We’ll reassess as we go if it's working or not.

I have terrible handwriting. I’ll consider if/how to address this issue as I go.

My one new expenditure is a tiny printer capable of producing really small adhesive images (think passport photo-sized). This should add some color and texture to the project that would otherwise be missing. We’ll revisit our physical tools as we get deeper into the process.

Mighty Generator, Guide Our Hands

A good generator or random table can express universal themes while also providing a reasonable amount of unpredictability. We’ll hit the generator to start most entries; some days will require banging our head against the enter button until something legible emerges. On other days, room after room will come into focus seemingly without our intervention. 

The generator can also be part of a positive feedback loop. When we find particularly resonant ideas within its output, some of those terms, words, and concepts will go back into the generator, further reinforcing our themes.

  

Sources and Inspiration 

Courtney Campbell’s Tricks, Empty Rooms, and Basic Trap Design, an update/commentary/expansion on Gygaxian AD&D 1E dungeon design, is a great resource, and informs some of the language in our generator.

We’ll be using the generator not (only) as a machine producing discrete dungeon rooms, but also as an abstract oracular tool. The generator can answer questions that go way beyond the contents of a room or the nature of a trap, if we read deeply enough into the meaning behind the results. The concept of universal tables and generators has no single originator, but this blog post is one of my favorite implementations.

In the same vein, the D6 universal resolution of yes/no questions in the generator comes from Dreaming Dragonslayer, although as they note in the post, the same idea has been created independently more than once.

Next week: Well Begun is 1/365 Done

One-and-Done Monsters

The Between Two Cairns podcast (this episode) recently discussed The Blackapple Brugh (available for free here). The hosts were reacting to an encounter with the Frog Prince, described thusly:

The frog is sentient and can speak, introducing himself as the prince of a faraway kingdom. He relates that he’s been enchanted by mischievous fairies, but if a fair maiden (or a plain maiden, or a man, as he is not that picky) will bestow a kiss upon his lips, the enchantment shall be broken. He promises that if freed from the spell and restored to his kingdom, his father the king will award the party with thousands of gold coins.

In fact, the frog is no prince at all and is only remarkable in that he can speak and has poisonous skin. Anyone kissing the frog must save vs. Poison or be wracked with pain for the next 12 hours. A person in this state is completely incapacitated and for the duration is useless for adventuring. The frog will apologize profusely for such a turn of events, claiming that the kiss must have required true love to be effective. The frog has 1 hit point and no means to attack or defend itself.

The frog prince is, of course, not so much a monster or even an NPC per se in likely function, but rather the sort of “trick” that characterizes classic old-school design. The interaction is weird and unexpected and basically all downside for the PCs (although surely at least a few parties playing through Blackapple found a way to weaponize the poor prince, perhaps by tying him to the end of a ten-foot pole and foisting him on enemies, or grabbing him while wearing prophylactic gloves and throwing him like a grenade).

The prince got me thinking about other glass cannon monsters – beasties designed to deliver their sting once, with no thought for their own well-being.

Gas Spores 

D&D’s monster manuals have featured one-shot monsters since early in the game’s history. They’re great for blurring the line between trap and monster. A few classic D&D monsters, like piercers, fit this template. The gas spore is a particularly famous example. 

Many have poked fun at the creature’s improbable lifecycle. But we can find plenty of interesting uses for it. Why not take advantage of its balloon-like properties and have kobolds or similarly light-weight monsters drift into battle hanging from gas spores? The PCs will get a kick out of shooting down the “balloons” with arrows, or summoning a gust of wind to drive the unfortunate fungalnauts into the side of a cliff. But the kobolds who make it through will have a nasty surprise for the players, intentionally popping their spores at close range.

Fungus-Zombie Parasite

Trying to reason out the frog prince’s behavior (is he lying, or self-deluded?) got me thinking. What if a creature acting in such a risky fashion is actually advancing the interest of a parasite? This is of course true of the real-world “zombie” fungus that infects ants and drives them to suicidal behavior to spread its spores. Perhaps the prince’s behavior is just a parasite pulling strings to spread itself through contact. 

To present the fungus zombie more literally, you could combine this idea with D&D’s myconid “zombies.” This engages with a classic D&D bait-and-switch, where the cleric attempts to turn “undead” that are actually something else. This can go too far if it becomes a gotcha to trick players into bad decisions. But with proper information and foreshadowing it can be a good encounter. 

The Bombull

It’s not all fungus and spores. Consider adventurers exploring an abandoned region peppered with ancient clockwork machines. Some are still functional, or at least malfunctional. These include the mechanical bombull, which looks like a bucking machine gone free-range.

When the bombull spots movement from living creatures person-sized or bigger, it lowers its head and charges. On impact, its horns depress into its metal skull, activating percussive primer charges that set off the bomb within its head.

The bombull should be a highly telegraphed, obviously lethal threat. That means it can also serve as a risky opportunity for adventurers who wish to bait it toward an obstacle, or matador it in the direction of their foes.

Homing Bee

This one is inspired in part by the vyderac from Hot Springs Island. Suppose the adventurers are attacked by a swarm of stinging insects; ordinary bees or similar, driven into an agitated state. The swarm is annoying, but not a serious combat threat. 

However, hidden amongst the mundane insects (and motivating their aggressive behavior) are one or more homing bees. These bees’ stings are no more painful than those of the other insects, and they die after stinging; but they also release their barbed stingers into their targets’ bodies. The stingers burrow into the target’s flesh, similar to a rot grub.

The longer the barb remains in the victim’s body, the worse they will feel. Their blood, when shed, will give off a honeysuckle smell. Their skin will take on a greenish hue. And progressively greater and greater numbers of homing bees from the original stingers’ hive will converge on the stung creatures. Whenever a creature dies with a stinger in their body, the “stinger” will transform into an egg containing a queen of a new homing bee hive, which will flourish in the grisly remains of the unfortunate adventurer.  

Draconic December: The Dungeonshell Dragon

Draconic December is the Alexandrian’s Discord channel community challenge for the month. Here is my entry.

The Dungeonshell Dragon

“For ten thousand years, a hill is a hill. Then one day it gets up and crushes your home!”
-Brill Grothbone, de-hoveled transient

The Draco Dormitabitesta (commonly known as the Dungeonshell Dragon) displays a unique and extreme version of draconic lair-making/hoard-building behavior. Before entering a centuries-long slumber, the dragon creates a “cocoon” from its melted hoard. A twisting maze of dungeon passages form a ventilated “shell” around this cocoon, and this structure is in turn surrounded by earth and stone, hidden from the outside world. Until one day, it all starts to wake up. 

The Moving Mountain

A hill, mountain, tor, plateau, or similar prominence of earth has separated itself from the surrounding terrain and is on the move. At first, its speed is no faster than an average person’s walking speed, but it doubles each day, topping out at 10 times its initial velocity.

Hooks

For low-level PCs, simply avoiding the moving mountain or dealing with its second order effects may be the source of many adventures. Mid-level PCs can adventure inside the Trembling Dungeon. High-level PCs may seek to stop the phenomena, up to and including facing the Awakening Dragon.

Complications and Hazards

Stampede! Mundane animals panic for miles ahead of the mountain, storming through villages and campsites even while the mountain itself is only a distant rumble over the horizon.

Landslides. Sections of the mountain slough off as it moves, crushing terrain to the left and right of its course, and inhibiting attempts to scale its sides.

Disinterred dead. The churning motion of the mountain has plowed up the long-slumbering warriors of the Great Skeleton Army, who will march in the ruined wake of the mountain, intent on plundering the rival city-state that fell into ruin a thousand years ago.

Gonna get some hop-ons. Opportunistic oxenfolk from the wilds have climbed aboard the moving mountain and now use it as a raiding platform. They have rigged ballistas with retractable lines to use to snare interesting loot or zipline down to unfortunate communities they can pillage.

Fumaroles. Sulphuric gas, long contained within the mountain, is now released in stanky jets from fissures in the slopes of the mountain. A keen sense of smell or an eye for sulfur crystals can spot these dangers before they blast the unwary.

Unlucky village. They built their homes at the top of the hill for the nice view, but now that hill is changing their perspective. They are too busy squabbling with each other to mount an efficient evacuation. 

Rolling stones. A scree of Galeb Duhr have (understandably) misinterpreted the mountain’s movement as the return of Storstein, the primordial boulder god. They will send animated boulders tumbling down the slopes at any meatbags who attempt to interfere with their god’s holy procession.

Kaiju battle. A tarrasque, titan, or other big boi interprets the moving mountain as a rival and attempts to fight it.

Investigating and Understanding the Phenomena

Destination. The mountain’s destination will not be inherently obvious, but PCs who track its progress over time may be able to figure it out. The mountain will move toward the nearest heavy concentration of powerful magic. This could be an archmage’s tower, an extraplanar portal, an arcane metropolis (in a sufficiently high-magic setting), or something else entirely. The destination may even be secret, hidden, and lost to time, attracting ambulance-chasing wizards, nothics, and even more unsavory sorts to the mountain’s passage.

Means of locomotion. The moving mountain acts similarly to a tectonic plate, riding on extremely hot magma. Differences in temperature, viscosity, and gas composition, intuitively controlled by the sleeping dragon within, control its course.

Interacting with the mountain. The mountain is not a creature for most rules purposes. Abilities like the ranger’s Primeval Awareness may reveal that a dragon is within the mountain. Spells like Commune with Nature may also reveal clues as to the source of the phenomena. The dragon cannot be seen, and cannot be directly targeted by most spells, but at the DM’s discretion, some forms of telepathic communication or divination magic may allow glimpses into its restless, dreaming mind. Creatures with tremorsense (like the aforementioned galeb duhr) can sense a “heartbeat” deep within the mountain. Venturing into the Trembling Dungeon and closer to the dragon itself will improve the effectiveness of these techniques.

Few things will stop the moving mountain, but it will not cross oceans or mountain ranges. Fresh spoor from another ancient dragon (not easy to get), usually used to mark territory, could motivate the mountain to circumvent a particular region. Adventurers may come up with other schemes; it should be difficult, but by no means impossible, to subvert the mountain’s path. 

Early awakening. Sufficiently powerful magic, such as the spell Earthquake, may cause the dragon to awake before reaching its destination, for better or worse.

The Trembling Dungeon

Twisting dungeon tunnels and ancient subterranean ruins separate the dragon from the surface. Accessible through openings created by landslides and fumaroles, the dungeon is home to both ancient and recent occupants. 

The DM could adapt an existing dungeon to serve this purpose, or randomly generate one. Because the dungeon serves primarily as an ecological/mystical purpose for the dragon, rather than an architectural/residential one for its denizens, it may have any number of dead-ends, illogically arranged rooms, or other “impractical” dungeon features.

Complications and Hazards

Restless slumber. The dungeon shakes and moves with the mountain’s movement and the dragon’s slow process of awakening. While it is not in danger of collapse until the dragon is fully awakened, chunks of stone and earth may fall free and land on the unwary.

Too greedily and too deep. Dwarven miners driven mad by gold fever refuse to leave the dungeon. They believe the dragon’s cocoon is a pure vein of treasure. Dangerous to themselves and others.

Disrupted parasites. An entire ecology of purple worms, bombardier beetles, and dire dermacentors has lived for hundreds of years within the mountain, depending on the dragon’s waste (and waste energy) to survive. They are now completely freaking out.

Pollyanna gnomes. These simple folk only wish to craft tall red felt hats and drink mushroom tea. They are self-deluded about what’s happening around them, but can be useful guides if convinced to help.

Doomsday cultists. They’ve been looking forward to the end of the world, and are hoping this regional disaster will turn into a global one.

Probing tongue. The dragon’s prehensile tongue is more than 120 feet long, and begins to instinctively explore the dungeon halls, even as the dragon itself still slumbers. For mechanical purposes, the tongue is more like a natural hazard than a monster, bowling over or grappling adventurers it encounters. But dealing more than 50 points of damage to it will cause it to rapidly retract toward the cocoon at the heart of the mountain. Dealing more than 100 points of damage will likely lead to the dragon’s early awakening. 

The Awakening Dragon

The final awakening process takes a full hour. The Trembling Dungeon begins to fall apart at this point, and the various denizens attempt to escape in a panic. During this time, the dragon is immune to all damage and any abilities or magic that would affect it short of Wish, divine intervention, or equally epic magic.

Use an Ancient Red Dragon stat block for the awakened dragon, with the changes and additions as noted below.

Lacquered in Gold. For the first three rounds of combat, the layers of metal coating the dragon give it +5 bonus to its AC, but limit its flying speed to 20’. Beginning on the fourth round, enough gold has sloughed off to allow it to fly freely, but the AC bonus also ends. 

Awakened Rage. The dragon is acting in a highly instinctual manner when it first awakens, and at best will be disoriented, aggressive, confused, and violent; but damage may serve as a shock to its system. As a general rule, the DC for any ability check to influence the dragon’s behavior (e.g., Charisma (Persuasion) or Charisma (Intimidation)) is equal to its current HP divided by 10 (minimum 12). The DM should give fair consideration to PCs’ non-violent proposals for reasoning with the dragon, but also be clear about the dragon’s agitated state and the difficulty of reasoning with it or diverting it from its purpose, at least at first.

Fixed Purpose. The dragon is immune to the Charmed and Frightened conditions. 

Immutable Form. The dragon is immune to any spell or effect that would alter its form.

Breath of Gold. The first time the dragon uses its breath weapon, it also expels the vast quantity of liquid gold that filled its throat and lungs during its long slumber. In addition to the normal effects of its breath weapon, those who fail their saving throws are coated in a thick layer of molten gold. They are restrained and take 7d8 damage on each of the dragon’s subsequent turns (as if affected by the spell Heat Metal cast with a seventh-level slot). Creatures restrained in this way may make a DC 21 Strength saving throw at the end of their turn to end the effect.

Still Groggy. Treat the dragon as if it had only a quarter as many hit points as it actually does for purposes of the Sleep spell. It has disadvantage on saving throws against spells such as Imprisonment that would put it in a sleeping or sleep-like state.

Unimpeded Awakening

If the dragon is not killed, subdued, reasoned with, or otherwise stopped from consuming the source of magic toward which the moving mountain moved, it will attempt to carry out the mythical impetus of its catastrophic slumber. This may take the form of opening a portal to the elemental plane of fire; spawning a new flight of red dragons; inciting all of the continent's volcanoes to erupt at once; or simply ending the world (hey, those cultists were right after all!)

The Free Kriegsspiel Wargame with Millions of YouTube Views

The Twitch streamer DougDoug and his viewers play video games in weird, amusing ways, either through mods of games like Skyrim and Grand Theft Auto 5; or external limitations and restrictions on how they play, like controlling characters with voice commands only. They’re fun videos, but not typically germane to tabletop RPGs.

What is relevant is a recent series of YouTube videos edited down from longer Twitch streams. He and his chat (who choose their actions through polled consensus) battle for supremacy first in Europe, then the United States, and finally in outer space. The outcome of each turn's action is determined by AI text generation. The game continues until one side reaches 10 points by acquiring territories through either invasion or alliance.

What’s the antecedent to this style of game? The obvious point of reference is the venerable board game Diplomacy, which also functions through alliances and conquests. But I think a certain “looseness” in Doug’s adjudication of the game pushes it closer to the Free Kriegsspiel Revolution (FKR) philosophy, as thoroughly explained by Jim Parkin in a Board Game Geek post here.

For example, Doug is effectively the referee, interpreting whether each block of AI text does or does not achieve the desired goal and thus score points. As in FKR, faith in the judge is required. Of course, nominally, Twitch chat (being Twitch chat) does not trust Doug, spamming the word “rigged” whenever a decision goes against them. But that’s more expressive of partisan enthusiasm than true distrust, and I would argue the members of the chat are “voting with their feet” by staying and continuing to play the game.

As another example, Doug, in his capacity as referee, must also make common-sense rulings mid-game, for example deciding in the first video that once a neutral nation has formed an alliance with one or the other player, the opposing player must invade it to “flip” it; they can’t simply attempt to overwrite the alliance with one of their own.

Working through Jim’s bullet list from the BGG post, we can make a pretty strong case for Doug’s game as FKR:

• Numbers don't add up to a game. The assets (people, armies, and resources) the two sides control don’t have stats or rules constraining their use. They are purely qualitative objects in the fiction, open to whatever use makes sense. 
• If the fiction fits, try it. The AI is a wild card and certainly introduces issues in terms of preserving in-game consistency, but less so than you might think, because it frequently “calls back” to events already introduced in the narrative, preserving some degree of continuity. In his capacity as referee, Doug additionally contextualizes the AI’s wilder diversions (and in a few cases, deletes obviously fiction-breaking tangents).
• You play worlds, not rules. Certainly true here, as the chat, in particular, introduces different media into the game. The second of the videos prominently features television character Saul Goodman, surely the world’s first Breaking Bad- / Better Call Saul-themed wargame.

The AI is an interesting factor in the resolution of the game that sets it apart from its antecedents. On one hand, it’s more chaotic and wild than dice or cards, because it can introduce so many unexpected elements out of left field. On the other hand, the AI, relying on the language it was trained on, repeatedly bends the story back toward genre tropes, favoring betrayals and surprising reversals of fortune.

As far as I know, Doug is not a TTRPG person, nor do I see any evidence from skimming the comments of the videos that the game was inspired by other RPGs, matrix games, or FKR. I suspect this was just an instance of convergent evolution, where people independently land on similar ideas, concepts, and rules simply because they make sense as a natural form of group storytelling and gameplay, universal to humans everywhere.