Badfreednd

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. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 t...

Acolyte Lair: The Carillon:  The Situation: A group of villagers have been drawn to a carillon by the eerie and disturbing music it plays each evening. Each morning, those villagers found a strange substance in the grass around the carillon, dozens of small crimson rings stacked around each blade of grass. They ate the strange substance, which they called Heavens Grace, and found that doing so stripped them of hunger and thirst, while filling their eyes with fractal imagery, and their hearts with religious ecstasy. The Carillonneur keeps the acolytes from entering the carillon, calling it a holy place. A Timeline: Within Days: Yurma Darby begins to transform, her form beginning to resemble The Carillonneur (See F1 description) Within a Week: The Carillonneurs transformation completes and he becomes a gibbering mouther. One Week: Freddy Greiner enters the carillon seeking answers, and is eaten and assimilated by the Carillonneur Two Weeks: The Twins and Layla Obalone begin to trans...

I've been thinking about stuck doors, what we get from them and what they cost.  The Benefits: Pacing:  I've run dungeons where the doors just open and in my experience, the party wanted to open as many doors as they had people to open them, so that they could peek in to see if there was anything obviously valuable inside. This led to me describing several different rooms and their encounters to several different people, all split up and spread out.  Using stuck doors serves as a clear end markers for dungeon turns. Strong characters have a much higher chance of opening a door quickly, and so doors require some commitment from the party in regards to where they will send their door openers. The time delay also gives other party members space to investigate seemingly minor elements of the environment that interest them while the party as a whole maintains a sense of forward momentum. And even if the party does spread out to open multiple doors, the fact that some might fai...