Short One With Maps

 A Mournful Dungeon Object

A finely wrought cage of bright metal, intensely warm to the touch and pulsing with life. Within sings a desperate vision. Just the length of a fingerbone, it weighs heavy on the heart. Once glimpsed, never forgotten. The door it opens is one you dread to find.

-Author unknown. Discarded beer mat.

Hello! Thanks for stopping by. These sketches are warmup studies of a shape I’ve been thinking about, inspired by this light housing I saw in Detroit a few weeks ago. I find it super interesting, so many facets and angles. This is the sort of thing my brain is drawn to, but it’s often difficult for me to conjure these kinds of details out of thin air. Someday I’d love to take the time to draw large scale highly detailed artificial and manufactured landscapes. I’m reminded again that I need to draw from observation more and work on building a cohesive reference library. Sometimes it helps to use a random sketch as a mournful dungeon object when you need a writing prompt. I’m short on time as always, so here are the maps!

Week 31: One last sneaky little room off of Level 7 and then we are on to Level 8! This is another side area off of the main shaft, so I guess I need to figure out what makes this area necessary. Put that one in the Things To Fix file. I’m definitely feeling further off the rails in the second half of this dungeon. I’ve stopped tracking connections and consistently forget to look at the rudimentary theme/outline notes I’ve made at the beginning of each month. Reminding myself it is a rough draft and a writing exercise. After a couple levels of caves and forests, this area is still open air, but fleshy organic matter and living rock covers hints of something manufactured by intelligent beings. Gross and weird is the vibe here and any incursion is promptly greeted with a physical challenge by a chosen warrior of the mosquito-like folk who protect this place.

Week 32: I guess this is a pretty major spoiler, but I think it’s important at this point to know that whatever this new continent is, this hope of a generation, it has previously existed elsewhere, and has absorbed pieces of those places and some of the creatures and things that it has encountered there. As I’ve said, I think a lot about the ways the dungeon changes the characters as they explore it. How has it already changed the creatures who have been here much longer and know it only as home? I had a good time stretching rooms and passages here to make them twist and wind, overlapping each other in interesting ways. Lots of elevation changes and some tunnels and rooms have transparent membrane walls from which you can see other areas. A dungeon made for breaking, perhaps.

Week 33: This whole section of the dungeon has been engineered by something, for something, or at least adapted to a new shape and purpose. More signs of advanced technology will be found here, but it was not created by the people who tend it and protect it. If the party finds its way through this territory, a surprising traveler will greet them eagerly and offer any assistance possible. The current occupants will provide formidable resistance and are prepared to endure a serious siege. Any adventuring party making it this far should make a nice challenge for them and a smart party may be victorious. After reading some of my previous entries, it seems impossible for anyone to get here at all. Can’t wait to test it.

Week 34: This is definitely a relatively organized operation. What is it doing here? Flying drones patrol ornately decorated tunnels that seem to undulate and breath. Fountains of black ichor and pools of crystal glitter in the dim bioluminescence. Oh, and if you thought mosquito people were creepy and gross, wait until you meet their children. Thousands of larvae crawl across a huge chrome tower that may conceal powerful secrets. I feel pretty strongly that players should be rewarded with XP for discovering secrets and exploring/mapping the dungeon, but that will need to be a future post. Finally, because I couldn’t write a megadungeon without an interdimensional goblin pawnbroker, there’s one of those here too.

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.

Thanks for reading! Please share and subscribe. As of this post, I have completed my September entries and am more than 75% done with the #Dungeon23 challenge! I will likely finish it a few weeks late, but the end is in sight!

Andy

Halfway There

Run through the jungle

Songwriter Roger Clyne used to address his emails “Dear happy and important person,” and I think about that a lot when I need to address people. I don’t have much else to say about it, except that I hope you are all feeling happy and important as you read this.

No bits of fiction or deep thoughts, but I’ve got four maps to share with you, most of the month of July. I’ve been on vacation and did absolutely no writing while away, despite my fantasies of sitting by a lake with a stiff drink and cranking out brilliant RPG Content. Don’t worry, there were lakes and drinks. Equally brain and time-consuming is this ongoing illustration project, which has proven trickier than anticipated. Feeling ok with it and chronically behind, as usual. I am pleased to share that I will be providing some new illustrations for the Abyss of Hallucinations Collected Edition from Max Moon Games and Exalted Funeral. Click that link to sign up for the Kickstarter! If you’re familiar with the Abyss, you may recognize my class illustrations from the first volume. The Collected Edition will feature three new classes including the Anarchist, depicted below. These illustrations provide their own difficulties, but I enjoy trying to work outside of traditional character and costume design. Doing art for the Abyss of Hallucinations also means I get to have fun with ink washes, which I love. Here you can see the finished pencils and the final inked scan.

I’ll have more to share about this project later, but I’ve got to get back to it, so let’s get to the maps!

Week 27: July marks a shift back to a top down view, which I’m enjoying. A lush jungle deep in the bowels of the dungeon, branching off of the central shaft. Lots of elevation changes here still, but I wanted to give players a wilderness experience, stalking through a heavily forested cave. This level in particular is sprawling and complex. The first thing PC’s encounter is a treacherous slope that feeds a horrible stone-eating beast. It doesn’t like flesh though, so there’s a good chance you’ll make it through to the other side, for better or worse. Escaping the rockslide brings a bit of respite before delving deeper. A humming pit compels risky behavior and lewd rodents mock clumsy adventurers.

Week 28: A groaning bridge stretches brittlely over a sunken glade. A gleaming metal man stands guard and plays games with your fragile psyche. In the distance, a gleaming golden light illuminates a plateau that rises above the terraced forest. I like the way this map works and I can visualize the elevation changes and the size of this huge cavern. This is one of the levels that I am most excited about eventually starting to illustrate. This whole space is fascinating to me and I remember knocking these pages out pretty quickly as I was catching up after a previous lull. By now adventurers will be aware that wise travelers from beyond and powerful extraplanar entities populate much of the dungeon. This level seems to be fully stocked with new weirdos.

Week 29: A lair! This is a fun one. A giant sentient tuber and her offspring call this place home and are not willing to share. Evidence of their carnivorism and brutality is abundant. A shifting hidden stairwell leads deeper and an ancient temple may provide some clues and useful tools. A skeleton of fused bone and glass holds a Heart of great importance. Is it as important as your eyes? It might be. I think I was on a pretty good roll when I was writing these and I really like the boss here. She can do some fairly horrific things if you don’t entertain her inquisitions. This section is pretty well hidden by a secret passageway, so it’s a nice surprise for those who can find it and will reward their bravery.

Week 30: That feels like a lot of weeks! Still going. More evidence of a settlement, ancient and ruined. Monolithic and alien. The echoes of former inhabitants ring throughout and skitter around in the synapses. Creeping vines and leathery flyers dwell here currently. There is some fun to be had with scavenging tables if PCs choose to spend some time here searching the ruins. Care must be taken when investigating the powerful forces that pervade the village. Things could get very weird very quickly and it might only be the next guys who find out what happened to you. They can just ask the giant frog being who lives in the baths.

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.

Thanks for reading! You know what to do.

Andy

Descent Into Madness

Making the worst of a bad situation

After these long days and weeks, I’ve begun to feel comfortable in this new skin. Muscles and joints have started to adapt and move differently, and travelling through the water with such ease is truly a joy. Breathing fluid is still uncomfortable and shocking, but I think it will become natural over time. However, nothing can last. As soon as Algite opened the seal, everything changed…again.

Whether by a flaw of engineering or a devious trick of design, there was nothing below us but open air. As the sea fell out from under me, I thrashed about blindly, desperate for purchase. The appalling dryness of it all was the biggest shock. And the sound, overwhelming and painfully harsh. A rush, crack and a scream from below was the last I heard of Algite alive. As I gathered my senses and reconciled my surroundings with my bewildered equilibrium, I found myself clutching a small spongey tree growing from a rocky ledge. Water poured down the slope around me, and far below I could see more rocks, illuminated by an unearthly light. But the depths were gone. I was left hanging in open air, my new gills flapping helplessly while my nose and lungs struggled to remember how to do that which was once effortless instinct.

- D’Bittel Bramms, Undersea Dungeoneering for Newbs and Landlubbers, vol. 1

Harry Clarke - From Edgar Allan Poe ([1919]), “A Descent into the Maelström”,

Perhaps it’s a coincidence, perhaps these are things that just bounce around in my head at all times, but I’ve recently been contemplating some unrelated Poe stories for a completely different project. I hope to share more of that someday, but this Harry Clarke illustration felt timely and appropriate. I love a nested narrative and they always seem so fitting for tales of the sea. Poe, Coleridge, and William Hope Hodgson all do it well. A character narrator who has clearly seen some shit. A grizzled old seaman who doesn’t really have any advice except “Don’t do what I did, it won’t end well.” Usually the Sole Survivor, cursed with second sight plagued with guilt and nightmares, and desperately in need of some therapy. Or just lots of rum. People better educated than I have surely written books on the subject, so I’ll move on.

As I’ve been busy with deadlines and projects the last month, I thought I could save time by skipping the little narrative bits I’d been putting at the top of these posts. This week I was feeling inspired, and I actually drafted that snippet prior to my scheduled every other Sunday blog day! Reflecting on these types of preambles and little story introductions has me wondering if this is just a good inspirational starting point for the author, a warmup exercise? That’s kind of how I’m feeling about these right now. It sets the tone, introduces some flavor and world-building to the story. I’ve missed writing them. It’s a lot easier for me to make up a short bit of fiction about previous adventurers and their delving than it is to talk design process or RPG theory (of which my knowledge is thin and my interest fleeting.) Even better, I love making up fictional books!

Now I’m sitting here writing a blog about writing a blog about writing a dungeon. If you’re new here, it’s amazing you made it this far, but I’ve said from the beginning that this whole #Dungeon23 experience is an exercise. This is an attempt for me to sit in a chair and try to write…anything. I have stacks of ideas but little free time or motivation to work on any of them. Daily stress and the extreme amount of attention it takes just to do my day job has made it hard for me to enjoy being a creative person for many years. Check out my first post if you’d like to know more. The goal of this dungeon and the accompanying blog are an attempt to develop a writing practice and a way to hold myself accountable for it. The bonus side of this is I can share it with a couple of fellow nerds who might be interested. I’m still not a writer. I’m barely an illustrator. But I’m working on it!

Just two weeks to share with you today, to keep up with my posting routine. I have settled into my previous spring schedule of being about two weeks behind on the dungeon. We’ll see if I can maintain that. One piece of art has been delivered and more are underway. (I did sign that contract, if you were wondering. I also received an advance!) Guitars are being built and repaired, and I’ve made breakthroughs on a couple of inlay design projects. The dungeon doesn’t care. The dungeon is waiting.

Week 25: Sometimes this really feels like I’m just trying to fuck with the players, but I guess that’s my job as a GM and dungeon designer. I can’t wait to playtest this and find out. Looking at the map more closely (it’s been a minute,) there is a ladder, but it is well hidden. Descending further is indeed madness, but what other choice does a party have? Continuing the theme of endless downward progress, but to what end? A pink hazy forest is visible several hundred feet below, with white “clouds” drifting above it. The dungeon will speak to you here, and it may even be helpful. A lonely spirit is searching for a companion and we see something wondrous that will be a shock to soggy underwater adventurers: BIRDS! They are perhaps less genial than the spirit. This brings up an interesting thought. Replacement PCs at this level of the dungeon may have been born here and may never have visited the surface. Note: make sure there are mechanisms for adapting or re-adapting to air-breathing!

Week 26: Ok, this one just looks like a Metroid level. An ancient sacred space, a gigantic calcified corpse, deadly traps, and something that might almost be a Boss Monster. If you can gain the favor of the Ambassador, you will be granted a great boon. If you can survive the deadly fangs of the Protector and tear your eyes away from its treasure hoard, you may gaze upon the Tree and the Mountain and the world between. The people here are peaceful and well cared for, if not entirely real. Seems like a nice place to visit. The first two entries for July feature the Sphere and Stair, a mechanism for transitioning from the underwater areas of the dungeon (specifically The Floating Gardens) to the deeper, drier areas where the mystery deepens. This page has a lot of Capitalized Things. Must have been a serious week.

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.

Thanks as always for hanging out! I appreciate any subscriptions and share. Comments and questions are always welcome!

Andy