Maybe I'll Just Make A Dungeon

After a bit of a hiatus from keeping up with the RPG-sphere (and not feeling motivated enough to get any of my own projects - or 15 draft blogposts, or eleventy billion notional-but-potentially-gameable brainstorm/shower-thought notes - into a shareable state), I've been inspired by a few recent dungeon design posts, actually getting some good OSR dungeoncrawling under my belt, and playing around with some tools. Before I knew it, I've got a foundation for a dungeon that I like well enough to try to build out and complete.

It's fairly vanilla, likely only one level, and doesn't involve any particularly special concepts, but I want to try putting into practice some of the guidance I've accumulated over the years, as well as my own design gripes and druthers. Particularly since I've never really created a "whole package" dungeon, beyond a few small experiments, heady ideas for more high-concept projects, and Moon College.

And right now my pendulum has swung toward feeling like it's better to create gameable content and contribute to the B/X Commons than to work on hacks and systems, which is what I find myself usually inspired to do, but is more prone to Icarus Syndrome. Even if it ends up workmanlike; walk before you run and all that.

In addition to the dungeon, I'm hoping to refine some processes for both design and production that I will share either along the way or near its completion.

It will be a good-old, tropey Dwarf Stronghold (which I feel like is underrepresented these days?), focus on a gather-the-macguffins to unlock [a treasure or access to deeper dungeon at GM's discretion], and the working title is currently:

The Seven

and Dreg

 

No guarantees. My modus operandi is to get T-boned by something shiny in a nearby genre.