The megadungeon pitch
Why I really started this blog
The real impetus to start a blog is that I am planning on starting a campaign centered around a megadungeon. I want to develop it piece by piece and post it for the whole internet to see.
This dungeon is going to be set in that euro-fantastical pastiche that most old-school RPGs are set in. It will be system-agnostic, though I will be playing Old School Essentials to playtest it. Any retroclone should do.
So what is this dungeon about?
I have been really interested by the idea of a lich that is around so long that there's nothing left of the person who chose to become a lich. A very powerful magic user, but also mentally incompetent and animalistic. Then, I got really interested in the idea of running a megadungeon. I shopped around for a while for a megadungeon I wanted, and Castle Xyntillan was the closest.
Frankly, I don't have the time to read Castle Xyntillan, and then it seemed like there was some drama around its author. I don't really need any of that at this juncture. So, in the interest of "saving time", we will be making a megadungeon. The core conceit is that this is the keep of that extremely old lich, which got more and more eccentric and odd as time goes on. Eventually, they lost the ability to keep outsiders to the keep out, and now there are even various discrete zones and factions inside the keep, it is its own ecosystem. This gives me "a wizard did it" as an excuse for stupid inclusions and beyond!
I like the idea of a dungeon which started as something between the typical keep or wizard's tower and got wildly out of hand. I am imagine the keep was built about 800 years before the module got going. Lots of time to add weird shit on to the keep, and to build it out massively.
What style will the writing be in?
I am prone to flowery prose, but I am terrible at referencing prose when I am running RPGs. I like the Necrotic Gnome house style, but I am not going to use it exactly. Expect the rooms to generally look something like this:
The description of the room is a few sentences and describes a thing. There might be more if there is a lot going on in the room.
- The bolded thing gets its own bullet describing what is in the room.
- If something is going on it will also get its own bullet, describing what it is.
Afterwards, there will be bolded text for each exit (with parenthetical indicators for destinations).
We will see if it holds. The goal is to have each section be ~20-30 rooms.
Whetting your appetite
Some of my ideas for stuff to drop into this castle are:
- Intro area where miniboss-style bandits prey on newbie adventurers
- Mucus zone
- Goblin town
- Tavern/inn inside castle
- Drugs garden
- Giant fridge, very scary monsters frozen inside
- Inner untouched sanctum of original castle
- Dragon nest
- Event Horizon style black goo gate to small devil zone
- Elementals research area that opens a portal to the elemental planes
- Moat is basically a canal, small underwater sandbox there for tribe of merfolk beset by big fucking gator I cannot guarantee that all or any of that will make it in. If you can get to any of these ideas before me, that's awesome, I emphatically support you.
Will you be making this on a schedule?
Not a hard one, no. I have a newborn. I will get this out as soon as possible, but soon may not be possible, if you catch my drift.
My goal is to have new sections every month, they will be in a draft state. I will make updates based on how playtesting goes whenever I am able.
As I have said on other pages, please send your feedback to hello@queuedawg.cc.