Six Months In

It's now been six months since the start of Dungeon23. Though I tend to be skeptical of these kinds of bandwagon-y Internet "challenges," I nevertheless decided to participate in this one, because I thought it a worthwhile endeavor in its own right – the creation of a twelve-level, 365-room dungeon over the course of a year – and because I thought its pace – one room a day – was sustainable. Sitting here at the beginning of the second half of the year, I still think that. In fact, I'm very glad that I've stuck with this, even if it's occasionally been harder to do than I'd anticipated.

As you may recall, I chose to use Dungeon23 as an opportunity to develop the Vaults of da-Imer, a subterranean area beneath the former capital of the Empire of Inba Iro. My hope was that my daily work would eventually provide me with an adventuring locale in which to playtest Secrets of sha-Arthan, as well as give me the opportunity to flesh out parts of its setting. I also felt it inculcated good discipline in me by ensuring that, no matter what, I wrote something every day if I wasn't going to fall behind on the whole project.

That's not quite what happened, alas. At the moment, for example, I am five days behind in my pace, but I have little doubt I'll be able to catch up soon. Part of the problem for me is that I am no cartographer. Drawing maps is something about which I do not feel confident. Likewise, I opted for an approach that broke down each month's level into two to four "complexes," each consisting of somewhere between 8 to 15 rooms. While a great idea from the perspective of variety, not to mention providing multiple pathways to explore the Vaults, it increased my workload significantly, hence my occasional backlogs of work.

On the other hand, I've completed six levels and 181 individual rooms so far. That's not nothing. I doubt I'd have made it this deep into the Vaults of da-Imer if I didn't have the artificial frame of Dungeon23. I remain reasonably confident that, at the end of this year, I'll complete all twelve levels and 365 rooms. The end result won't be pretty, but it'll be a substantial amount of raw material from which to build something more polished. Even now, I often find myself going back and adding to or editing previous entries, as better, more complete ideas come to me. Frustrations aside, this has been a worthy project. I hope others have found it similarly useful to them. 

Dungeon23

Megadungeon for 2023. 12 levels. 365 rooms. One room a day. Keep it all in a journal. ⁦@LukeGearing⁩ let’s do this. pic.twitter.com/tCVgh8i1MF

— 💭 Sean McCoy (@seanmccoy) December 5, 2022

An old mantra of this blog has long been that "roleplaying games were born in the megadungeon." By this, I simply mean that most of the earliest examples of what we would today recognize as RPGs were played in the context of exploring an immense, subterranean locale filled with monsters, magic, and mysteries – Dungeons & Dragons, Tunnels & Trolls, and Empire of the Petal Throne, to cite just three examples, all assume that much of a campaign's action will center around delving into the depths. Obviously, roleplaying games can (and should) include so many more activities, but there's something satisfyingly primal about braving the mythic underworld and returning to tell the tale.

To be worthy of the name, a megadungeon shouldn't merely be vast in size, it should also contain enough to hold the players' attentions for a long period of time. Unlike smaller, more focused "lair" dungeons, like those typically found in published adventure modules, a megadungeon is a sprawling, rambling thing that isn't about any one thing, nor is it possible to "clear" it. Instead, it's a place to which the characters can come again and again over the course of weeks, months, or even years without ever fully exhausting. A megadungeon can thus be the centerpiece of a campaign, in the way that Castles Blackmoor and Greyhawk were in their respective campaigns and the Jakállan Underworld was in the earliest Tékumel campaign.

I was reminded of all of this for two unrelated reasons. First, as you'll know, I've been working on a science fantasy RPG I'm calling The Secrets of sha-Arthan. When I first conceived of the idea a year and a half ago, I called the project The Vaults of sha-Arthan. The Vaults of the title are megadungeons by another name – deep, ancient labyrinths reputed to contain the secrets of the deific Makers. From the beginning, I knew I wanted to develop one of these Vaults as the basis of a sha-Arthan campaign and have been slowly poking at the idea ever since.

Second, Sean McCoy, the creator of Mothership, proposed something that's come to be known as Dungeon23. The idea quite simple: create one room each day for a megadungeon throughout the entirety of 2023 and then share the results. I thought this was a great idea, if only because it took what might otherwise have seemed like an insurmountable endeavor and broke it down into a much more manageable form. Since I was already contemplating the development of one of the Vaults of sha-Arthan for use in a campaign, Sean's idea struck me as worthy of an attempt.

So, among other things, 2023 will see me attempt to flesh out the Vaults beneath the ancient city of da-Imer one room at a time. Since I already have a lot of ideas of what that fabled underworld might contain, I'm pretty confident that I'll be able to keep up the pace for a while. Of course, this is a marathon, not a sprint. The real test comes after a few weeks or even months, after the novelty of the exercise begins to wear off and the realization that a year is a long time to commit to a single project.

I'll undoubtedly have a few more thoughts on this, as I work on it over on my Patreon. For now, I only wanted to say publicly that I intend to pick up the gauntlet Sean has thrown on the ground. Wish me luck.

The Tumíssan Underworld

While I am busy developing the Vaults of da-Imer as my Dungeon23 project, cartographer extraordinaire, Dyson Logos, has decided to devote himself to the underworld beneath the western Tsolyáni city of Tumíssa. 

Dyson plays the stolid warrior Grujúng hi Znáyu in my House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign. Over the last nearly eight (!) years of play, he's established himself as not just one of the pillars of the campaign but also as a keen student of all things Tékumel. That's why I'm really looking forward to seeing what he comes up with as he works his way through this project. By the end of the year, his Tumíssan Underworld will likely have become one of the most extensive "dungeons" ever made for use in Tékumel. I have no doubt it'll be a great one.

By Hand

Last month, I mentioned that I'd be participating in Dungeon23, a challenge to create a 12-level, 365-room megadungeon one room at a time over the course of 2023. One of the reasons I decided to take this up was because I'd already intended to begin more extensive playtesting of the rules for my The Secrets of sha-Arthan RPG this year. Having a large subterranean locale ready for players to explore would help me in this effort, as well as providing me with an opportunity to flesh out the setting further. Thus was born the Vaults of da-Imer.

Though I was very excited by the prospect of detailing the Vaults, one aspect of this project gave me pause: mapmaking. Even in my youth, when I had the time to devote to such things, I was never very good at cartography. Of course, back in those days, I also wasn't very self-aware and so my obvious shortcomings didn't much affect me. I'm not so lucky in my middle age; I am keenly aware of the inadequacy of my mapmaking skills. However, I am elected to proceed nonetheless, drawing the Vault's maps by hand, in the hope that doing so might, if nothing else, encourage me to keep at it until I reach some mediocre level of proficiency.

To that end, here's the first map I drew for the Vaults of da-Imer. It's from a section of Level 1 known as "The Threshold." I've opted to give the Vaults a node-like structure rather than the more traditional approach to dungeons. Hence, Level 1 consists of five complexes of 4–8 rooms, each effectively its own "mini-dungeon" within the larger whole of the Vaults. I've never done a dungeon like this before, let alone one consisting of 365 rooms, so it'll be interesting to see how it turns out in the end.

Into the Megadungeon

Ben Laurence over at Mazirian's Garden is working on a podcast called Into the Megadungeon that will explore the ins and outs of refereeing a megadungeon-focused fantasy roleplaying game campaign. The first episode will be released on Tuesday, August 8, and will feature yours truly talking about both my Dwimmerount megadungeon of old and the Vaults of da-Imer megadungeon that I'm slowly constructing as part of Dungeon23. 

Additional episodes will be released on biweekly basis. Ben intends to produce 10 episodes as part of the first season of the podcast, with each episode featuring a different referee who's created and refereed a megadungeon campaign for an extended period of time. I have no idea how long he can keep the podcast going – I doubt Ben does either – but I think it's a worthy topic and I look forward to listening to the episodes as they're released.