I’ve decided to do the #Dungeon23 Challenge as I mentioned in my prior post where I describe what it is, resources some have suggested, and my own ideas about it.

The biggest issues after sticking with it for a year are narrowing the scope of the project so that it is manageable, and narrowing the scope to what resources one uses to generate the maps, select themes, and populate each room.

Some can just wing it and do it all off the top of their head. If I did that, it would be rather bland. I want something fun and interesting that others would want to use, whether in whole or in part.

For generating the dungeon, I’m thinking of the 1e DMG Random Dungeon Generation tables. At the least, I will use it to plan the entrances to the dungeon. I think having multiple levels have a connection to the surface, even if a convoluted connection, makes sense. Some of those connections would be how various creatures get into the dungeon to begin with.

I think there should be factions in the dungeon that control a section of a single level, or multiple levels along obvious stairwells, etc. Food, water, waste disposal, power, control (of areas, creatures, features, magic, etc.), alliances, absolute enemies, minions, lieutenants, and bosses, should all make sense. Just figuring out how all this works would be part of the adventure and exploration for a party of adventurers.

My Process

I’ve decided to stick with what I have and use a Graph Composition book for thee #Dungeon23 Challenge.

I have an index page and page 1 is for Brainstorming.

Using ideas I’ve scrawled in notebooks or written blog posts about or new ideas.

• Levers & tilting floors, sliding walls, etc. Both simple and complex traps. Some of which are not obvious to the trapped that they have been trapped.
• Kobolds as maintainer & re-setters of traps. They get food and wealth from traps. However, they compete with carrion eating monsters. Kobold controlled territory will have fewer carrion monsters.
  Kobolds will ignore those who ignore them.
• Magic and other items will be USED by dungeon dwellers. Adventurers will RARELY find magic items not being used.
• Not everything in the dungeon is a monster to be slain. Killing intelligent creatures will invoke the enmity of all the others against those responsible. Murder hobos will not last long.
• Using wits and planning and avoiding fighting as was the case with original D&D style of play will achieve better results. Only creatures of animal intelligence or truly evil intent will the party be at risk of a fight.
• Balanced encounters are not a thing. Creatures of more HD than the level of the dungeon will not be rare, especially near connections between levels. Factions that span multiple levels will project power in this way. Masses of low HD creatures will offset the advantages of multiple HD creatures, especially if the low HD creatures are cunning and cooperative.
• Various tricks and trap ideas I’ve written about on my blog or in various notebooks, but never used.
• Food, Water, and Waste – How do the dungeon inhabitants survive and not fill up the passageways with refuse?
• How do intelligent dungeon inhabitants make use of the unintelligent ones to maximize their strength and control of their territory?
• Creative encounter tables – See Nested/Dynamic Encounters below.

Deciding Which Resources To Use

There are far too many good resources to help generate and populate dungeons to just limit it to one resource. This includes manuals of both old and new games, gaming resources for such things, and so many blog posts over the years of OSR blogs about this very topic.

No one resource has everything I feel that I need for this. If I only had to pick one resource it would be the AD&D 1e DMG [Affiliate Link]. This would be Appendices:

• A – Random Dungeon Generation
• G – Traps
• H – Tricks
• I – Dungeon Dressing
• K – Describing Magical Substances

More Blog Articles On Megadungeons

Here is a collection of links to various blog posts about megadungeons. Some of them are collections of articles. Sadly, many old blogs and some articles are no more, not even on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

Old School Campaign Tent Poles

http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2009/02/old-school-dungeon-design-guidelines.html

http://thedragonsflagon.blogspot.com/2012/05/secret-door-triggers.html

http://therustybattleaxe.blogspot.com/2013/12/megadungeon-hall-of-fame-megadungeon.html

http://thedragonsflagon.blogspot.com/2014/01/keying-corridors.html

http://initiativeone.blogspot.com/2014/02/ready-reference-whats-blocking-corridor.html

Megadungeon talk abounds!

http://9and30kingdoms.blogspot.com/2014/02/random-dungeon-musings.html

https://dungeonfantastic.blogspot.com/p/megadungeon-design.html

https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=27662

http://beyondtheblackgate.blogspot.com/search?q=megadungeon+design+and+philosophy

http://therustybattleaxe.blogspot.com/p/dungeon-links.html

http://therustybattleaxe.blogspot.com/p/megadungeon-links-ii-maps-tables.html

Dynamic/Nested Encounter Tables

This is a great idea that can be applied to dungeons, cities, and hexcrawls to make encounter tables generate more interesting results. Or use as a base to make custom encounter tables including those options. (Great for one shots and convention games, or modules.)

http://monstersandmanuals.blogspot.com/2011/10/dynamicnested-encounter-tables.html

http://www.welshpiper.com/dynamic-encounter-tables/#more-2342

Sean McCoy kicked off an idea on Twitter that soon took off.

Megadungeon for 2023. 12 levels. 365 rooms. One room a day. Keep it all in a journal. ⁦@LukeGearing⁩ let’s do this. pic.twitter.com/tCVgh8i1MF

— 💭 Sean McCoy (@seanmccoy) December 5, 2022

He went into more detail on his blog.

The idea is simple:

• 12 Months – Levels
• 52 Weeks – Themes
• 365 Days – Rooms

Some rooms are empty. Descriptions need not be complex. That is, keep it simple.

This idea has taken hold across Twitter, Mastodon, blogs, and other social media.

Some have lists of a few Megadungeon Resources:

Has anyone compiled a list of different great megadungeon resources for #dungeon23?

I’ve collected a few before I remembered I shared a thread from last year that had a ton of stuff in it.

— Goblin Archives (he/him) (@goblin_archives) December 9, 2022

I've updated this post with some additional resources, plus I figured I'd present the info in a more twitter friendly format to please the algorithm.

So key resource to understanding megadungeons #1, the first 3 pages of vol 3 of whitebox (the rest of vol 3 & b/x are great too) https://t.co/GRE3HuhSlT pic.twitter.com/YwBwZlhtHO

— 𝐍𝐞𝐨𝐧 𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐬 𝐀𝐯𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐧 (@yungdumbitch) March 16, 2021

Some have created resources specific to the theme of a room per day:

https://twitter.com/zwgarth/status/1600637717162987524

I'm joining #dungeon23 but I wanted to make my own fancy li'l printable journal for it. It's free for anyone to download, print and distribute. Have fun and make cool stuff.https://t.co/n8jqQBJu0x

— Shouting Crow (@ShoutCrowPress) December 8, 2022

One posted a carrd page with the suggested 52 weekly themes.

There is a carrd 🃏for #dungeon23 : https://t.co/oyHQ7DEqFF

— 𝖂.𝕯. (@wldenning) December 7, 2022

My Musings

It caught my imagination too. I am so close to acting on this challenge.

The #Dungeon23 idea is interesting. The original idea is to use a weekly planner and do one level each month, one room each day.
The result is a 12 level 365 room megadungeon.

This needn’t be limited to a dungeon. It could be:

• 12 separate dungeons,
• 12 districts of a city,
• 12 regions of a wilderness.
• All places to explore.

I’ve always wanted to do a megadungeon. All efforts thus far have ended way too soon.

I’m debating doing this. Getting past January will be the hard part, my busy time at work.

• One could also plan out their own multi-level generation ship for Metamorphosis Alpha.
• A large base or space station.
• A mine.
• So many possibilities….

The dilemma is which idea to settle on and actually do it.

• A monthly blog post to show each month’s results?
• Clean it up & publish it?

Making sense of it so that it is an organic structure with factions & any changes resulting from adventurers will change how things proceed.

• What planner to use?
• Physical or digital?

Time to let the mind wander.

I favor Graph Composition notebooks that are 200 pages of quad ruled paper.
40 x 28 squares per page. That’s 1,120 squares.
Seems small for 31 rooms, not leaving room for hallways that’s 17.5 8×8 rooms, or 70 4×4 rooms.

The page seems small until you start to build something that makes some sort of sense. Not all rooms will be tight packed.

Some plan of general structure and guidance makes sense.

The goal is to finish, so a plan to help succeed means pre-planning.

Each level could be a different smaller dungeon connected by portals.
The portals could be one way or have the connector back to the prior dungeon be in a separate location.

So many ideas….

The Megadungeon tag on my blog.

City 23 Challenge

I see some are doing the #City23 challenge instead of the #dungeon23

Back in 2015 for the April A to Z blogging challenge, my theme was cities. That might help those doing the city challenge get some ideas.

2015 A to Z Challenge Theme Reveal – Cities/Cities As Ruins/Cities As Megadungeons