D&D General #Dungeon23

[Eyes of Nine]

View attachment 270887

Ready to start! Here's the first hex of my tower. Encounter naming conventions: MonthDateWeekday so
0101Su
0102Mo etc

Further fleshed out concepts:
A titanic tower, with each level sketched per week. Each level is a hex, approximately 200 miles across (10mile squares); and about 10 miles up. Each hex has a different terrain type and predominant climate. Monsters and cultures found are of that climate/terrain. Except in uncommon situations, the inhabitants don’t actually know they are in a “tower” - they find their small 200x200 mile world enough. The tower may split at some points, like a tree with branches. In fact, at higher levels there maybe “branch” levels with surface cultures - who knows?

There will also probably be multiple points of ingress.

And - this is going to be OSR style - ie, no "level-appropriate" encounters. Whatever makes sense is what we'll get...

 

[bedir than]

Burnout. This project is almost a perfect recipe for burnout. So take it easy and don’t feel like you must keep up. Go at a fun pace.

My solution to this is going to be to try and keep it as a 30 minute exercise.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

For stocking rooms, I plan to use the B/X formula of one third of rooms being empty (with one sixth of those containing unguarded treasure), one third containing monsters (with half of those carrying treasure), one sixth containing a trap (with one third of those protecting treasure), and one sixth containing a special feature. I’ll probably roll all the rooms for a week at the beginning of the week so I can have a rough plan for how to fit together whatever I roll. That’ll serve as good inspiration for the week’s theme.

Hmm, that's an interesting split. I was intending on having one empty room a week, but that's probably a little punitive, given how much stuff there will be to hide and run from otherwise.

 

[Charlaquin]

Hmm, that's an interesting split. I was intending on having one empty room a week, but that's probably a little punitive, given how much stuff there will be to hide and run from otherwise.

Yeah, at first blush it seems like 1/3 is a lot of empty rooms, but in a dungeon crawl context I think they play an important role, both in setting the pace, providing breathing room and allowing a slow build-up of tension. Especially since, just because a room is empty, doesn’t mean the players will know it’s empty. Not to mention the fact that a random encounter roll can turn any empty room into a room with an encounter in it.

 

[Reynard]

Yeah, at first blush it seems like 1/3 is a lot of empty rooms, but in a dungeon crawl context I think they play an important role, both in setting the pace, providing breathing room and allowing a slow build-up of tension. Especially since, just because a room is empty, doesn’t mean the players will know it’s empty. Not to mention the fact that a random encounter roll can turn any empty room into a room with an encounter in it.

Also, "empty" doesn't mean "uninteresting." Empty rooms have mosaic floors depicting strange lore. Empty rooms have furniture built something very obviously not humanlike. Empty rooms contain fluting in the ceiling that sings a mournful dirge when the air currents are right.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I did some math and some wikipedia work, and realized a 10x10 mile square is a hex of 36,000 square miles, or about the size of the US state of Indiana, or the country of Hungary. That's way bigger than I want.

So I'm shrinking my square size to 3x3 (5x5km), for a hex roughly the size of Puerto Rico or Cyprus (not including the water). Also, my sky will be 3 miles up, or approximately 16,000 feet/5000m.
I was thinking of perhaps making my hexes larger at the beginning and shrinking them as they go up - we'll see how I'm feeling after a month or two...

Put together some quick tables to get the macro settings on each hex

 

[J.Quondam]

I did some math and some wikipedia work, and realized a 10x10 mile square is a hex of 36,000 square miles, or about the size of the US state of Indiana, or the country of Hungary. That's way bigger than I want.

So I'm shrinking my square size to 3x3 (5x5km), for a hex roughly the size of Puerto Rico or Cyprus (not including the water). Also, my sky will be 3 miles up, or approximately 16,000 feet/5000m.
I was thinking of perhaps making my hexes larger at the beginning and shrinking them as they go up - we'll see how I'm feeling after a month or two...

Put together some quick tables to get the macro settings on each hex

I don't quite understand this... I think your math might be off?
A 10mi x 10mi square is 100 sqare miles. A similarly sized hex of 100 sq.mi area will be about 10.75mi across the short diameter, and roughly 12.5mi across the long diameter (ie, corner to opposite corner).

I find this calculator to be helpful for hexes. Just plug in any parameter (eg, side, area, diameter, etc) and the rest pop out automagically:

Hexagon Calculator

The hexagon calculator finds all the geometrical properties of a regular hexagon.

www.omnicalculator.com

 

[Reynard]

Here's my broad background for building my megadungeon: Beneath Parenix Manor
During the waning days of the High Regency, the ignoble but wealthy Alastairn family purchased themselves land and title and built Parenix Manor atop Mornrax Hill. There in the wilderness -- the only civilization being the Bridgeroad Inn a few miles away -- they set their laborers to work.
Five generations of Alastairn rules at Parenix, each one more cruel and eccentric than the last. Mornrax Hill was no natural mound, but cairn to some forgotten dynasty of pagan kings. The Alastairn delved deeper and deeper each generation, finding older and older chambers from kingdoms, civilizations and races long forgotten.
A century ago, long after the High Regency fractured into the Warring Thrones and eventually collapsed into the Seven City States, the last scion of the Alastairn succumbed to greed, perversion and blasphemy and the windows of Parenix Manor went dark but for occasional ghost light.
Only the tales told around the lonely hearth of the Bridgeroad Inn -- miraculously still active even in this decrepit age -- remember Parenix Manor and hint at the wealth and secrets of the Alastairn family that might lie below Mornrax Hill.
----
I have decided to rely on Dyson Logos maps -- a) because they are awesome, and b) I like consistency.

I have developed a template for each room as well, so it is easy to be consistent. Importantly, I included a "connections" section in the template -- not architecturally, but thematically. It is there to remind me every time I make a room to think about how it might relate to a different room somewhere else in the dungeon. This isn't a series of rooms to be cleared, but a place to explore and understand and maybe survive.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I was going to go with a four-area dungeon for my overland level, but I think I'm going to make the first quadrant of the "dungeon" be a village in peril, with bandits and cultists and maybe worse lurking behind closed doors, in barns and in basements.

This will give the characters a home base to return to periodically during the campaign, a place to protect from the dangers of the mega-dungeon, but also fits the computer RPG vibe I'm going for: This squalid little town is going to have a blacksmith, a sage, a wise bartender, a low level mage skilled in identifying magic items, etc.

We'll see how long it'll take my players to jump to their feet and go, "ah ha, you're doing a D&D version of ______," since I think all of them will be familiar with the computer game in question. Still, it's a very sound foundation for a mega-dungeon and my take will naturally evolve into its own thing, especially as I work to Jacquay the dungeon with multiple different connections between the levels.

 

[Faolyn]

Burnout. This project is almost a perfect recipe for burnout. So take it easy and don’t feel like you must keep up. Go at a fun pace.

Most daily creative challenges are, IMO.