Just the Maps

 Yep, more maps

Hello folks! It’s gonna be a short one for real this week, but the maps must flow. I’m a few weeks behind on writing daily entries, but I squeeze in chunks of two or three at a time. Actually writing a dungeon room every day just doesn’t make sense for my brain. Interestingly, this newsletter has been better for developing a writing habit than the actual creation of the dungeon. I think the fact that 17(?) people subscribe to this is a good source of accountability. Currently, my plan is to share maps every two weeks until I’ve completed all 365 entries. At that point, I’m likely going to scale back to posting once a month and hopefully I’ll have the brainwidth to share some other interesting ideas and art. I’ve got a handful of other RPG projects in the works and I’m very much looking forward to setting this dungeon aside for a while. Along with my usual burnout, my enthusiasm for this has lagged. I do have some playtesting planned for it early next year, and that should ease me into starting to make sense of the early levels. Things have gone in unexpected directions at these lower levels and I’m unsure what will even make it into play. I have lost many threads in this process and found a number of new ones. No problem, it’s a first draft!

What else am I working on? Illustrations as always. I spent the weekend painting guitars so I can try to get a few things wrapped up before the upcoming holiday. I’ve got an elaborate Mothership thing I’m writing that I can talk more about later, several smaller projects (I’m fascinated by double-then-trifold pamphlets), and a new map for a certain Abyss that I may document here as I draw. I’m also devising a system to generate a huge city map by numbering this fidget cube and throwing it on a sheet of paper a bunch of times. It lands in interesting configurations sometimes and I’ve been thinking about that instead of this dungeon. Stick around for some of that next year!

Week 35: The last few areas of August introduce one of the more powerful and baffling entities to be encountered in the dungeon. Seems like a good ally to have if you can make any sense of its aspirations. Or you can sit and watch what happens to the unworthy. The domed walls sing with every step you take on the grand bone stair. September! September is…different. Trying to experiment with the form a bit more and change up the maps. This level is essentially a point-crawl through various pocket dimensions accessed via a variety of magic mirrors. It is disorienting and it is dangerous. What you see in the mirror is what will be.

Week 36: The question of dungeon presentation and design style keeps coming up. For a point-crawl, all we need are some nodes and paths. I’ve done the bare minimum of trying to dress them up, if not for presentation at least for my own clarity. Some of them got silly. For this mirror maze in particular, many of the paths are one-way, which adds a level of challenge as you move about. I also intend to add a mechanic that determines the order in which you will encounter “exit” mirrors. Some of the creatures you encounter here may follow you through the maze if you give them a reason to. Most of the rooms in this dungeon are keyed with a word or two for a descriptive (or cryptic) title. For some reason I decided each of these mirror worlds should have an arbitrary made up name. Silly. This section features a bit of time dilation, a beach vacation, some soothing words from an outsider. It may be wise to protect one’s nose against being devoured.

Week 37: Ok, at this point even I am asking myself why this exists. I told you, the burnout is real. Like the dungeon, quality ebbs and flows. Sometimes writing is a formidable monster to be overcome. Some paths cannot be reversed. Heroes traversing the mirror maze will realize that this is a place of sorrow and a place of memory. Like other parts of the dungeon, you can become lost here. It doesn’t mean you’ll die, but you may never leave. I’ve thought a lot about what would happen if the PCs just wander off into a mirror universe and start adventuring there! Could you forge a peaceful living in the glistening tendrils of the mountain tyrant? The key to the journaling nature of this dungeon is that I physically have no space to elaborate on anything. A couple sentences and it’s done. Time to move on. So many hanging hooks and tasty tidbits to be revisited and revised in a later draft.

Week 38: A giant tetrahedron on which every side is down…the worst. This section of the mirror maze features a genuine Way Out! This leads to the surface. Yes, the real surface. Do you remember what that is? I’ve always imagined a hex map will detail the surface of this new continent that houses The Pit and every curious thing within. I’m sure the opposite end of this portal is well hidden somewhere, perhaps a well guarded wizard’s tower or maybe just behind some farmer’s outhouse. Thinking about surface locations sure seems fresh and exciting. I’ve been down here for so long. In one mirror you will be chased by tiny psychotic city dwellers while in another an immense hairy creature will assist you if he doesn’t accidentally step on you first. I clearly wasn’t reading my own writing here because I’ve got two room descriptions that are nearly duplicate ideas. ROUGH draft. Next episode: The mental health parallels between the writing of a megadungeon and the exploration of said dungeon.

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.

If you’re still reading, you are awesome! Please subscribe and share if you find this worthwhile. Perhaps some user engagement would help get my creative juices flowing. I think they’ve slowed in anticipation of Minnesota winter. Later!

Andy

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

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

Work in Process

 How Do Art?

They came out of the darkness above. Our only warning was a soft thrum of bristly wings. Sickly blue skin shone in the wormjar light as one alighted on Tobby’s chest, driving its thorny legs into his armor. A yellow mist burst from the thing’s underside, splattering his face. He stumbled back, shrieking and flailing. Before I could get to him, the Cleaner’s fluttering mouthbrushes had scrubbed the melting flesh from his face. Our only hope was to run. There was nothing to be done for Tobby.

-unknown-

Hey folks, thanks for stopping by! I am still catching up here, but I am pleased to tell you that I have completed Week 32 of the #dungeon23 challenge, and am less than a week behind overall. Other things in life and work have been taking up a lot of my energy lately and I don’t have any deep thoughts about RPG design today. I do want to start sharing more art. Most of these sketches I’ve been sharing are just little doodles and colored pencil studies. Sketches are easy and loose. I don’t care if they are good. I have a much different relationship with completed work, especially for publication, and that can be a real struggle at times. Here’s a bit more about my current process for creating FINISHED ART.

In this instance, I was tasked to create a dungeon entrance in a hexagon for The Demon Lord Expansion for Twelve Years by Max Moon Games. I’ve done a few of these hex illustrations now and I enjoy the freedom and space they give me to work.

The first step is always composition and design. Thumbnails. Dozens of thumbnails. These are a few of the ideas I sent along to Max.

Hellmouth Hex Thumbnails

The two of us we will then identify design elements that make sense and, most importantly, look cool. This hex is meant to be a stone demon head at the back of a forgotten garden. A slightly more polished thumbnail, maybe larger, will be done to solidify the composition a little more. I always enjoy breaking the hexagon border with fiddly bits and I was having fun with silly plants and the broken path.

Once we've agreed on a good direction for the final piece, I will start a full-size drawing. I’m new enough to this that I’m still playing around with the relationship between drawing size and final print size, especially for zines. I think I’m figuring out that bigger is better. In this case, I think I started at about 160%, or whatever made sense for laying out a regular hexagon by hand. I also did something a little different with this batch of drawings…I did a huge amount of the pencil work in blue. Here’s what that looks like in process. Things are still pretty rough at this point, I’m still working out details and solving the puzzle of this space.

I might write more about blue pencils later. I did quite a deep dive to find the right ones for me, and I have a drawer full of all different types at this point. After the blues are done, I can just do one “finishing” pass with graphite to really tighten things up and get all the values right. This is that, scanned. A bonus of this process is that I get a lot less graphite all over the place, as I am a sloppy draftsman. You can see the amount of erased blue and overall smudging that it takes for me to get this far.

You’d think that would be enough, but no, still gotta ink. The pencils are scanned, blue is removed, and the remaining lines are printed full size…in blue, of course. I’ve been inking printed blue lines for a while now, and it makes a huge difference. By the time I’m done with pencils, my paper is torn to bits. Inking on a fresh sheet of Bristol is a dream. Still, this is the part that I have the hardest time with. This is the final version for all to see, and it must be perfect in all ways! It isn’t, and I’m growing increasingly ok with that. I’ve got some different techniques to work on, and I need to practice drawing plants. Overall, I’m pleased with this one. Most importantly, I learned a lot. That’s what this whole thing is for, right? Getting paid is also nice.

Ok, that got long. How about some dungeon maps?

Week 15: Players further exploring Sanctuary will find this level a little drier…for now. The strange people that lurk here are very protective of their home and their worship. Few among them can explain the actual theology of these creatures, and they seem to practice out of instinct and ancestral fear. Whatever they believe, it does seem to give them power.

Week 16: I was struggling a little bit with a way to keep this level interesting from a cartographic angle, beyond the usual weird dungeon/weird creature tropes. This goes back to my previous blog post about dungeon connections. So, what if different parts of this level are connected by a swift underwater river? It would provide sustenance for these people, and may be viewed as a divine gift in itself. But, what if it is also a deadly proving ground? Young warriors must pass this test to earn The Gift, and adventurers passing through this area may be challenged to a grueling race for survival.

Week 17: This spread format works a little better here than on the previous level. This bit in particular ties the rest of the level together by looping the river back on itself. Where does it start? Does it end? There are some fun and useful treasures to be found here if the PCs can navigate the river race safely. Previous dungeon levels may hold the means to do this. Satisfyingly, April 30th was a Sunday, so the month wraps itself up nicely on this page.

Week 18: And now for something completely different. What can you do to break up the monotony of a punishing, dark, wet megadungeon? Turn level 5 into a hexcrawl through a vast sprawling garden floating deep below the surface of the ocean. The Floating Gardens were always part of the plan, but never like this. The gardens surround the central shaft of the dungeon and mark a major transition to the lower half. I quickly realized this area will require a lot of extra work and some new procedures to think about, but I love how much it changes the feel of everything that has come before. It should make for a fun surprise when discovered.

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.

As always, thanks for reading! Please share and comment if you’d like. I’d love to hear your thoughts on art, process, and megadungeons.

Andy