D&D General #Dungeon23

[Bill Zebub]

1.30 Goblin Lookout

• 1/2 mile tunnel from area 1.23
• High-ceilinged cave with columns
• Ledge on north wall 15' up. Skill check to notice.
• 2 goblins on ledge:
  • Hard to spot, but they aren't paying attention
  • If they can ambush party they will shoot arrows
  • Will flee to get help

 

[Cadence]

The stat blocks I have for the Gale Mephit and Grandma upthread are clearly (and in fact) built by me using SRD 5.1 material, so I added:

"The description of <insert creature name> below is an adaptation of material taken from the System Reference Document 5.1 (“SRD 5.1”) by Wizards of the Coast LLC and available at Systems Reference Document | Dungeons & Dragons. The SRD 5.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License available at Creative Commons — Attribution 4.0 International — CC BY 4.0 ."

right above the stat blocks to both of them in the posts. I will either add that I claim no additional rights or that I give my rights under CC BY 4.0 after I figure out if I can do the former just by saying so.

 

[Reynard]

01.30: Summoning Chamber

NOTE: I am changing room 01.30a to 01.30, 01.31a to 01.30a and 01.30b to 01.31.

Access: This chamber is accessed from the stairs leading up from the study (01.24) by two doors. There is a locked and warded door in the north wall as well, leading to the infirmary (01.30a).

Description: This room was used by the Alastairn family to summon entities from beyond the veil between worlds. The southwest wing is full of crates and boxes containing the many different tools, reagents, appliances and materials needed for summoning different entities. Skilled conjurors can identify most of the materials and using them halves the rate of failure for such summoning.
The eastern portion of the room is dominated by a massive summoning circle. It can be used for reaching through the veil on almost any scale and has drawn everything from mindless servitors to godshadows. Although not currently active, anyone with arcane sense can feel the weakness of the veil here. If used to summon extra-worldly entities, the circle doubles both the chance of success and the chance of a catastrophic complication.

01.30a: Infirmary
Access: The door to the infirmary is locked and warded. The lock is of high quality but ultimately mundane. The ward protects specifically from passage by extra-worldly entities.
Description: This room served primarily as a recovery chamber of those exhausted by summoning or even injured by creatures summoned (or uncooperative sacrifices). There is a large bed and a supply of many different kinds of healing equipment and materials. It was also used as a refuge from any escaped summons, given the warded door, and a few days of food, water and wine were kept here. Like the rest of the manor, the room is damaged by the elements and pests.
Treasure: Enough equipment can be scavenged from this room to form a working chirurgeon’s bag. None of the food or water remains viable, but two bottles of wine remain drinkable. Hidden beneath the bed is a rotting leather bag containing a long sword enchanted against extra-worldly entities.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

One month in, roughly - how are things going? What sorts of blockers have people encountered? And how did you get past them? What have you found about the project or your own process or anything else that surprised you?

 

[Cadence]

One month in, roughly - how are things going? What sorts of blockers have people encountered? And how did you get past them? What have you found about the project or your own process or anything else that surprised you?

My blocker is when I have a big room/plot point I haven't finalized in my own head that I don't have time to think through, so I randomly jump somewhere else and sprout a new part of the Dungeon.

I had the main idea kind of sitting there, but the first two sprouts have themes that I don't remember consciously thinking about. So it has been fun watching them grow.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

My blocker is when I have a big room/plot point I haven't finalized in my own head that I don't have time to think through, so I randomly jump somewhere else and sprout a new part of the Dungeon.

I had the main idea kind of sitting there, but the first two sprouts have themes that I don't remember consciously thinking about. So it has been fun watching them grow.

I like that planting a seed metaphor. d23 is definitely like that in many ways

 

[uzirath]

I like that metaphor, too. The smith's underground home that I've been working on started that way. I just had the idea of a boulder covering a hole in a passage. Then it became a front door which meant that the occupant needed to be very strong. One thing led to another and now I have a cool NPC area outside Caverntown to use in my campaign.

My only block is time. I don't always have time to complete an entry every day. So far, I'm still keeping the dates in order so I just catch up when I get a chance. If I miss too much, though, I may need to skip over some dates to keep it reasonable. We'll see. I also do a lot of background work that doesn't produce a room. I'm thinking that some of that should be dated and added. (Like creating a character sheet for an NPC or something like that.)

I'm having a ton of fun with this.

 

[gorice]

One month in, roughly - how are things going? What sorts of blockers have people encountered? And how did you get past them? What have you found about the project or your own process or anything else that surprised you?

Just caught up with the end of the month this morning, with so I can start next month properly. The blocker was some IRL disruptions which made it very difficult to get anything done, but now that things have settled down, I don't see any obstacles to doing one room every day.

I was surprised by how quickly doing a room became part of my routine (jotting something down with my morning coffee).

Because (a) I'm a perfectionist and (b) I've written plenty of dungeons before and know my own process, I decided at the outset that each room was going to be merely a rough draft, with no concrete map (because I always move things around at the last minute) and a clear intention of going over the project at the end of the year and rewriting/reorganising it. This has made it much easier to write: I'm writing whatever pops into my head, not stressing about how everything fits together.

One thing I've found is that the week-long 'themes' I've been doing (is that actually a strict criterion of the challenge? I can't remember) don't quite fit my conception of a dungeon region or sublevel -- I'm finding that my rooms seem to naturally cluster together in groups of 4-6. I think I might have to start sub-diving some themes into regions.

For next month, I also want to give a brief writeup (and maybe a diagramme) of each theme and region to explain the idea behind it. I generally already have an idea, but future Gorice (and any readers) might appreciate the clarity.

 

[Bill Zebub]

One month in, roughly - how are things going? What sorts of blockers have people encountered? And how did you get past them? What have you found about the project or your own process or anything else that surprised you?

I think I rushed through some of the sections of my dungeon. I should have added a lot more rooms to each area. There are still a lot of days left!

 

[Mannahnin]

Don't forget empty rooms, folks! I know Hriston and one or two others have done a lovely job reminding us as this has gone on, but empty rooms are totally legit. And if you don't have time on a given day you can always jot "empty" on a given room and then fill in a few descriptive details or a monster later if an idea pops into your head.