Now What?

The best way out is (not) always through

I was thinking a lot this week about what I’m going to do with this megadungeon when the year is over, which brings up a dreaded and so far thoroughly avoided topic: How Does It End? Short answer, I don’t know. I had hoped to have a better idea by now, but I simply haven’t had the time to sit down and think about it. Heck, I don’t even have a complete outline and at this point it’s a little late. It’s all kind of discouraging, because I have some good ideas here but it feels highly disorganized and I can’t help but wonder if I took a wrong turn somewhere. I take some solace in the fact that it’s merely the rough draft, but as with many things I start, I have a difficult time following through. I am committed though, and looking forward to eventually going back over all of this and trying to make sense of it. Will it become a Finished Thing, worth sharing or publishing? Will anyone ever explore it for more than a session or two? These grander existential questions are not an ongoing concern, at the moment it all seems like some sort of fever dream. I do know with absolute certainty that it will end and that I will then take an extended break from this particular project.

As I write this, I should instead be working on my paid illustration work. Hey, I forgot that I never returned that contract, so I guess I don’t really need to. I could instead be trying to catch up on Day Job work, or I could be trying to write one of half a dozen other RPG ideas that I’m more interested in or that seem more tangible…maybe even completable! I don’t even really have anything coherent to write a newsletter about this week. I could write about the ridiculous Haunted Space House I’m working on for the Mothership RPG (a thing I’m actually excited about but don’t have time to work on.) I could write about blue pencils, sketchbooks, or how much I hate the Bristol board I’m using for the illustration I’m currently working on, but I’m exhausted. As expected, with illustration work due, I have fallen more than a week behind on the dungeon. I’m not stressing that, I’ve caught up before, and I’m much further behind on more important work. I still have several months of maps to share though, and I wanted to write something. Putting something out into the world every other week feels important, for accountability and to help me establish a writing practice.

With that, I’m gonna keep this short and get into the maps. Only two this week as I really am crunched for time and creative energy. I’ll try to keep at least that much going for the time being. Thanks for hanging in here with me. Please continue to read and share if you would, it helps keep me writing. I’d love to know what questions you have about this dungeon, games in general, art supplies (I have OPINIONS), guitar building, whatever!

Week 23: It seems like I still had coherent ideas and visions of a larger picture when I was working on these June entries. Most importantly, I had the good judgement to realize that nobody wants to play through an entire megadungeon anyway, and trying to keep it interesting and weird while being entirely underwater is just a bit too much. In fact, it’s even weirder if it starts to dry out farther down. Most of level 6 is a vertical descent through a tropical forest, clinging to the steep sides of the shaft. There are magical forces at play here, and discovering what shapes them is part of the puzzle. If they make it this far, PCs will have “unlocked” some powerful abilities to survive and move about underwater. Time to throw that out the window (for now) and see if they know how to climb! Plenty of potential for falling damage. I am making a note to myself to think about streamlining climbing procedures and rulings. (I could write several blog posts about how much time my gaming group spends fucking around with ropes in games.) Visually, it feels great to get back to the side view of the dungeon. It's all about the descent. Get Deep.

Week 24: I’ve hinted earlier that it feels important to me for there to be a point of no return in this dungeon. Not that it will be impossible to leave, but certainly not practical, and maybe not even desirable. One of the themes that keeps bouncing around in my head is the idea of the character becoming part of the dungeon. Not only is the dungeon changing as players interact with it, but there is a fundamental connection being made that will alter the way players play the game. Why return to a life of poverty and oppression if you can build a future here? If you make it this far, there will be ways to leave, but probably not the way you came. I want you to stand on one of these ledges and look up into the verdant dankness overhead, through which you’ve now travelled downward hundreds and hundreds of feet. I want that return to the “safe” parts of the dungeon to feel impossible, or at least not worth the effort. Or am I just a lazy dungeon writer and haven’t bothered to think of anything fully worth pursuing at the bottom of this pit? Stick around and find out. (I could write several blog posts about how bored I am of treasure and gold as XP, or how I think all endings suck, but that’s how this started and I am way too tired.)

This post has been converted from a previous Substack post and dated accordingly. Please let me know if it seems like something got lost or if you find any major formatting issues.

This was supposed to be a short one. Thanks for reading and sharing!

Andy

On Assignment

 This will all end in tears

Hey folks! I’m telling myself to keep it short this week. I’m diving in to a new illustration gig, which will consume my evenings and weekends for a few weeks. My day job is consistently pretty stressful and I’m way behind schedule, so blogging may take a bit of a backseat for now. I do intend to keep sharing maps and hopefully stay only about a week behind on the daily dungeon entries, so please stick around!

For fun, here are some little figure studies I’ve done recently to work on motion and fluidity. I like to think of them as dancing skeletons. I haven’t done any live figure drawing in many years and my grasp on anatomy has always been tenuous, but it seems to be good enough for old school RPG work. These little gestural sketches help me start loose, even if I tend to overwork things to exhaustion. The new assignment is to create three character illustrations for an upcoming but unannounced project. More about that later…for now, I’ve started hashing out proportions and movement in blue for the first character and I’m feeling OK about my progress.

Let’s talk about the dungeon! If you were here last week, you know I love a hexagon. You also know that for some reason, level 5 is not as much a dungeon floor as it is a fairly expansive underwater hexcrawl, surrounding the central shaft of the dungeon up to this point. I’m not even going to get into how much that increases the whole scope of this project. I had intended to create a hexcrawl for the surface of the world as well, so why not another? Fortunately, May has 31 days, which allows me to organize the Gardens in an interesting way. Four sections of seven hexes each and the extra three days become the “bridge” across. The central dungeon descends through the middle, but only grants access to two other hexes. Of course, there are plenty of other ways to reach the Gardens, and you could always just…swim.

The timing of my post didn’t really line up, so you’ll have to check out the previous one to see the first chunk of the Floating Gardens.

Week 19: So, due to the constraints of my planner notebook format, some of these hex chunks are sideways. Makes sense to me. I have yet to stick them all together to see what that looks like. Rough draft…just gotta keep moving. The increased scope of the Gardens means I’ve created a lot of very different ecosystems and faction relationships in rapid succession, so there is a LOT going on here and it’s fun to reread some of this a couple months later. I’ve also decided that beyond the general description, each hex should have a Secret. This chunk of the Gardens contains a Silt Desert, a village of tiny people, an ancient beast trapped in a labyrinth, and a shitload of seaweed.

Week 20: That’s a lot of weeks! This one is visually my favorite of the hex chunks. The dark hexes represent an expanse of empty sea that is magically dark and difficult to breath even for sea dwellers. The entries for those hexes are mostly a table of things that might ambush you in the dark. Good times. Of course, if you gain the respect or friendship of the Mountain, you may be granted safe passage. Yes, it’s an actual mountain…kinda. On its slopes live a community of water sprites who herd giant water fleas and ride waves of massive drifting leaves to move throughout the Gardens.

Week 21: Something has poisoned and killed much of the north side of the Floating Gardens. Think it might have something to do with the Giant Haunted Palace? No way to know for sure. Lots of fun things to think about around here, like lamprey skeletons and a minor sleeping god. Some big answers may be found, and PC indiscretion (or ingenuity) could set some major things in motion. But there are also helpful beings here, and a nice place spend the night. Stay for a while! Stay forever! This chunk features some of the things I’m most excited to illustrate when the time comes.

Week 22: The last three days of May create the bridge between the north and south chunks of the Floating Gardens. In the center is the rest of the dungeon, or at least a small access point. This is guarded by some serious opposition, as a lot of things lie in the balance between the Upper and Lower sections of the dungeon. That transition will be covered a bit better at the beginning of Level 7. I know, it’s complicated. I really need to work on that map of connections…

This page also features the first four entries from June. This is actually the area directly below a specific room on Level 2, but it would exceedingly difficult to access early in the party’s exploration of the dungeon. Nothing is impossible, and I look forward to seeing what happens here during an eventual playtest. The difference between a Metroidvania video game and a TTRPG Megadungeon is that one of them is breakable, and I like to encourage that.

This post has been converted from a previous Substack post and dated accordingly. Please let me know if it seems like something got lost or if you find any major formatting issues.

Okay, that’s all I’ve got tonight! I’d love to have time to write extensively about hexcrawls, but I probably don’t have anything new to add on the game design front. I just like to draw them and write random tables. I’ll see you soon, but don’t forget to subscribe and share! Tell me why you think hexagons are cool!

Andy