Dungeon23 Weekly Progress Report 1

 

My January 1 Dungeon 23 entry

Today I made my sixth entry to the journal for Dungeon 23. So far, so good. Above is a quick scan of the entry for January 1st. I've starting out drawing and detailing small sub-sections, mostly because that is how it flowed while I was doing things. Right off the bat I realized that space on the page was going to be at a premium, so I need to get more minimalist in my descriptions. I'm keeping a list of tables and sub-tables I need to get drafted as I go along. The monsters mentioned will be stat-less. The whole thing is going to be pretty-much system agnostic. I want to focus on the cool stuff and the encounters and the factions, etc. I can always stat things out later.

In the past I have had a tendency to over-think stuff, or to get bogged down in details. The Dungeon 23 Challenge has given me a way to just draw/write something every day. I am treating the journal as a prototyping sort of experiment, a sketchbook that I can get messy with, make mistakes, scribble-out stuff that doesn't work, generally focus on getting whatever I'm doing down and then going back later to make it all pretty or presentable. It has been a really good experience so far. It has also been great for getting my hands back into working order as well. 

Some of the other entries this week got a little more detailed, so I added some extra pages from another, similar-sized journal. I'm going to try to keep that sort of thing to a minimum, for the most part. I am aiming for a sort of minimalist approach, at least to start out. We'll see how long that lasts. I want to remain open to whatever strikes my fancy when I start drawing each new section or room. My preliminaries came to a stop when I realized that I was recreating a lot of the background for Clatterdelve all over again, so instead of fighting it, I opted to just go along with the creative impulse and now I am exploring and mapping all the various Known, Unknown, Secret, and False Entrances to this place, as well as the immediate surroundings and all that goes along with it. I will explain in more detail in another post.

So, in a nutshell, everything is proceeding really nicely and I am thoroughly enjoying this process of drawing and detailing one (or more) dungeon rooms/sites each day. I also plan on doing some Wilderness Maps for the surrounding areas as well, so I'm looking forward to that. Might just get a chance to try out the very cool Gygax 75 Challenge for part of that!

Lastly, I am considering doing a series of blog posts that dig into the details a bit more for what I'm building for Clatterdelve. There are going to be a lot of tables needed, as this is a very Procedural Space, and there will be a lot of unique treasure items/looty bits, and numerous spells and what-not. I'm loathe to provide stats right now with the whole Cloud of Unknowing swirling around the OGL (and by extension the possible extinction-level event some see threatening the continued existence of the OSR), but should that constellation of crises somehow be either averted or not turn out to be the apocalyptic undoing of everything we hold dear (tm), then maybe once that's all sorted and settled, I can start posting new monsters and spells again. I do hope thing get straightened out soon. In the meantime I am enjoying reading through a number of non-OGL games.

Some Random Resources for the Dungeon 23 Challenge

 

Dungeon23 Logo designed by Lone Archivist and generously made available for free through the CC BY 4.0 licenses.

"Megadungeon for 2023. 12 levels. 365 rooms. One room a day. Keep it all in a journal"

Sean McCoy posted this to Twitter, then to his Win Conditions substack newsletter early in December 2022. I might never have heard about it if Ben from Mazirian's Garden hadn't passed on word of the open challenge, as well as posting an excellent write-up of the Challenge that convinced me join in on this particular bit of nerdery. He is posting periodic Round Ups of Dungeon23 Related Things that I hope will become a regular feature since there are just tons of cool stuff going on all over the place for Dungeon23.

I found the idea of having a simple, daily practice that allowed me to set aside a bit of time each day to just draw/write/create one dungeon room at a time, by hand, in a journal very appealing. After years of my hands getting progressively more painful from chronic pain associated with a really nasty bout of Lyme, I am now mostly symptom-free and I could use the daily practice of this challenge to help get back into things and to get my hands back into working order. I really appreciated Sean's most recent "Slow Down, You're Doing Fine" post over at Win Conditions. This is all about the process, the daily practice. I don't care if I just scribble all over a page, as long as I do something every day. Keep moving forward. 

Sean posted a set of optional Prompts for Dungeon23, Spooky Action at a Distance posted an Alternative Schedule, and soon after Gus L. posted some seriously detailed Dungeon23 Worksheets. Soon there was a Reddit, a group at Facebook, and some excellent articles started to appear such as Narrowing the Focus over at Follow Me and Die, and How to Slay Your Dungeon at Sharktopus Games, among others. I already talked about some of the blog posts/articles/essays I was using to get prepared for the challenge earlier. I'll keep a list of any other articles, essays or whatnot I find particularly useful during the challenge and will post that later.

I started out keeping track of some of this stuff in the right-hand side-bar of the blog, but it quickly grew unwieldy, and besides Duvelmann's Vault of Dungeon23 Resources over at Github has outgrown my effort by a considerable margin. Likewise his collection of Dungeon23 Resources at Itch.io and the Dungeon23 Jam are both very much worth checking out. Speaking of Itch.io, Hexed Press produced a very handy Dungeon23 Helper that I highly recommend as well as the Dungeon 23 Logo that Lone Archivist made available for us all. 

(EDIT)

There is a Directory of Participating Blogs at Reddit, and there is a handy online form for Tracking Dungeon 23 Projects.

Thank you all for doing such great stuff!

Getting Ready for the #Dungeon23 Challenge

 

My drawing table needs some organizing...

By now you've either heard about the #Dungeon23 Challenge, or you've turned aside and gone on to saner pursuits. Good for you.

Slowly, over the last week or so, I've been gathering my supplies and collecting what look like pertinent resources. I ordered a very nice Worldbuilder's Notebook in royal blue from Swordfish Islands. You can see it there on the lower left-hand corner of the table. It's sitting on top of a Fabriano dot-grid sketchbook, just below my truly beat-up first edition DMG that lost its cover more than a decade ago. I've printed out a few articles that looked like they'd be handy or thought-provoking, like Gus L's So You Want to Build a Dungeon? and his excellent Dungeon23 Worksheets. I also printed out a copy of Goblin Punch's Dungeon Checklist, and a few things from The Alexandrian, as well as the latest revision of the Hexed Press Dungeon23 Helper from over at Itch.io. There are a few other bits and pieces I scraped together from around the internet, but those are plenty to get started.

Pencils, pens, markers, the old steel rule, some erasers...all the usual art supplies are ready to go. Tiny sketchbook (for extra details or monsters), little index cards for NPCs, and some post-it notes just in case. Yep. That's about as prepared as I know how to get for such an undertaking. So wish me luck, if you will. Starting January 1st I will be devoting one hour a day to drawing/writing/creating one room/area at a time kept in a journal, done by hand, with a goal of producing 12 levels, 365 rooms/areas that may or may not form a Megadungeon by the end of 2023. Nothing quite like a daily practice to get back into the rhythm of things. I'm really looking forward to this.

Dungeon23 Logo designed by Lone Archivist and generously made available for free through the CC BY 4.0 licenses.

#Dungeon23 Challenge for 2023

Dungeon23 Logo designed by Lone Archivist and generously made available for free through the CC BY 4.0 licenses.

"Megadungeon for 2023. 12 levels. 365 rooms. One room a day. Keep it all in a journal"

Sean McCoy posted a few days ago about writing up a megadungeon - by hand, in a notebook, journal, or planner - one room a day for the entirety of 2023. His post at Win Conditions (his substack newsletter) goes into more details. His original Prompt List is available separately. There are quite a few other bloggers posting tons of links to resources of every sort and kind imaginable, so just search on "Dungeon23," or use the hashtag #Dungeon23 and you'll find plenty to keep you occupied.

What I'll be doing (or at least attempting) is creating one room a day, every day for 2023. By hand. All messy, imprecise and whatever. This is perfect for a daily practice for one hour each day, or something like that. I may scan it all in later and clean things up, add some bits and pieces after the fact, but the primary focus is to design one good room per day for the year and see where this process takes things. I really like the idea that this megadungeon, or series of littler dungeons, will be developing organically through daily practice.

With luck (and Perseverance) I will end up with 365 rooms (maybe more). Sean recommends breaking things up into 7-room sections by week to keep things manageable. He is also collecting each month's rooms into a level, so there'll be 12 levels. Sounds pretty decent. I may or may not do that. I don't know yet.

I am planning right now to only post once a week as to my progress, maybe more often, maybe not. I'm approaching this as a fun daily exercise/experiment sort of thing, not a tedious task that gets in the way of other projects, and I do have a lot of backlogged stuff I want to work on in the coming year. But starting my day with an hour in the morning doodling and writing about a fresh, new dungeon of some sort that even I don't really know anything about -- yet -- well, that sounds excellent to me.

My copy of The Worldbuilder's Notebook from Swordfish Islands just arrived yesterday, so I'm all set and ready to go...but I am going to hold off on things until closer to the First of the Year. Like Sean said:

Don't overthink it. Don't make a grand plan, sit down each day and focus on writing a good dungeon room.

That, to me, sounds like an excellent way to start out the New Year.