the megadungeon calls to me, far away, I hear its wretched wailings on the wind. i cannot refuse it, and now i prepare to once more plumb the dark corners of my mind to build it, brick by wretched brick, door by cursed door.
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I have been thinking about another megadungeon. More accurately, how to make one. I think I came up with a process that breaks the dungeon down and organizes it into color coded regions with thematically consistent pieces that are present throughout the whole dungeon.
The First Block is Color
10 of them total, these are our region baskets, they hold the themes and details. I once heard that a megadungeon isn't mega without 120 rooms per floor, I disagree, but that's my target number.
10 regions of 12 rooms will net 120 rooms per floor. This is a big undertaking, but is broken down into 10 complete 12 room dungeons to draw and stock, which I'll do little at a time, focusing on a dungeon at a time. Minimal detail, taglines and ideas. Write in sentences not paragraphs (This is where I will attempt to borrow from Chris McDowall and Zedeck Siew, a lofty but admiral goal. Terse and evocative). First ideas, they can be built upon later.
Each region will be drawn using those colors for its walls. I will be mapping using Gimp 3. Colored pencils would also work, I think the deluxe packs might have gold, silver and bronze.
Also apologies to anyone reading who is colorblind if this is inaccessible to you. Let me know if you have any tips or ideas about how to improve that going forward.
painting is an excellent release for the fountains of the mind, even if pixels replace pigments
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The following are the colors I will be using (With themes I'll talk about in a minute):
Red: Fire, Love, Blood, Hate:
Orange: Transformation, Illumination, Frivolity, Warning
Yellow: Contradiction, Pleasure, Light, Caution
Green: Nature, Disease, Envy, Youth
Blue: Water, Darkness, Authority, Cold
Indigo: Beauty, Craft, Pride, Time
Violet: Brevity, Royalty, Vanity, Ceremony
Gold: Extravagance, Brutality, Envy, Fervor
Silver: Air, Magic, Memory, Duplicity
Bronze: Earth, Antiquity, Conflict, Combination
To each color I ascribed 4 themes (I got that number here. I'm not sure I'll structure encounter tables that way, but, a table that generates 6 pairs of themes is useful, I might incorporate later, and it's always good to steal ideas from Chris McDowall). I got the themes from my associations with the colors and a glance at the wikipedia for each.
I want to imply the color of each region using the themes
I will be using the same generation method, colors and themes for each floor so that there will be natural overlap for various regions of the dungeon. The same pieces used in many ways.
This will hopefully give a sense of connection between the floors of the dungeon in a way that feels organic, it could also strengthen more obvious connections, highlighting them for players. It also, also limits my pallet for each floor, which aids against the paralytic that is a blank page.
There are many ways in, and many reasons to stay
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The Second Block is Ecosystems
Next, I'll generate a seed monster for each region. I'm using the encounter table featured in the OSE reference booklet that I expanded so that there is a chance to roll a monster from every other table. The encounter, The encounter tables are available digitally here, minus my "improvements". The google sheet I made can be found here .
I rolled once for each region and noted some initial thoughts. This is what my dungeon looks like now:
Colors, Themes, and Seed Monsters
Red: Fire, Love, Blood, Hate:
Seed Monster: Pixie (From another place, their magic is stolen by warboy wizards with a potions like liquid fire)
Orange: Transformation, Illumination, Frivolity, Warning
Seed Monster: Gullygug (Frog People, definitely a faction, they value humor but are hard to crack)
Yellow: Contradiction, Pleasure, Light, Caution
Seed Monster: Oil Beetle (Could be a valuable resource)
Green: Nature, Disease, Envy, Youth
Seed Monster: Regular Cobra (Still scary in a dark hallway, rats and wererats maybe too, I've never done that one before)
Blue: Water, Darkness, Authority, Cold
Seed Monster: Berserker (Reckless would be dungeon cops, 70's tinge and real jerks, could work closely with the Acolytes in Gold which gives them some legal backing for violence, they are here for recreation)
Indigo: Beauty, Craft, Pride, Time
Seed Monster: Fire Beetle (Cool reaction potential with Oil Beetle)
Violet: Brevity, Royalty, Vanity, Ceremony
Seed Monster: Ogres (From a lower level, members of a lower faction, here for the oil beetles, and to extort adventurers and other factions)
Gold: Extravagance, Brutality, Envy, Fervor
Seed Monster: Acolytes (Cults are a classic dungeon staple, but I like the idea that is an invading monotheistic army of zealots, led by their warrior not-pope)
Silver: Air, Magic, Memory, Duplicity
Seed Monster: Basic Adventurers (Maybe a higher level adventuring party, with a basecamp on the first level, you can use it for a price. They have lots of connections and intel about lower levels, but are hesitant to give it to potential competition, they have rivals and old scores all over the dungeon as well.)
Bronze: Earth, Antiquity, Conflict, Combination
Seed Monster: Homunculus (Implies at least 1 magic user, I mentioned warboy magic users who chug potions that feel like chasing tequila with battery acid, cheap buffs with a physical cost, and a potential dungeon market that snakes through the dungeon, with the Berserkers in Blue acting as guards, they wear disguises, probably some agreement with the Ogres for goods and services)
Each Seed Implies Some Things
Scrap World has a cool blog post about building out an encounter table around an ecosystem, and I want to use that idea here.
So each seed monster has connections to other seed monsters, and to monsters specific to certain regions that are implied by or tied to one another's existence, fast and loose and return for a spit shine.
Ecosystems do not need to natural, they can include stone bricks and conscious desire.
The seed monster connects to 5 other monsters, represented by an encounter/stocking table, each element should be represented on the table, in a situation that incorporates one of the regions themes, or a neighboring regions themes.
I think this has potential for long term, slow burn consequences and dungeon building, where eliminating elements of the dungeon is like pulling Jenga pieces out of a hierarchy.
These connections can run between floors as well, and those are what should be build upon for regions below.
To illustrate this idea better, I think I need to create one of the regions, so I think that's the next post, the red region of floor 1.
Thank you for reading this, I appreciate it.
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