Preparing for Dungeon23, Part 3: Resources

Like I mentioned yesterday, today's post is going to be all about resources that I'm going to use to help me on my Dungeon23 project.

First up will be this post from Sean McCoy, first laying out the idea for Dungeon23. Specifically, I'm going to draw inspiration from his list of one-word prompts to inspire each week's work. I'll repeat the list here just for reference:

  1. Ancient
  2. Death
  3. Sunken
  4. Love
  5. Empire
  6. Heavy
  7. Rural
  8. Darkness
  9. Bloom
  10. Rust
  11. Noise
  12. Childhood
  13. Time
  14. Excess
  15. Decay
  16. City
  17. Factory
  18. Flood
  19. Sleep
  20. Cold
  21. Ash
  22. Touch
  23. Meat
  24. Solitude
  25. Growth
  26. Greed
  27. Luck
  28. Fall
  29. Pit
  30. Chaos
  31. Laughter
  32. Smoke
  33. Forgotten
  34. Library
  35. Ocean
  36. Song
  37. Roots
  38. Bones
  39. Hangman
  40. Blood
  41. Prophet
  42. Idol
  43. Door
  44. Light
  45. Stars
  46. Bridge
  47. Mask
  48. Cut
  49. Sacrifice
  50. Incense
  51. Rise
  52. Gold

OK, so those are freaking great. Each word feels like it has so much to offer for inspiration! So many of them seem to fit together thematically as well.  Like "Bloom" (birth or rebirth) followed by "Rust" (decay); or "Greed" followed by "Luck" followed by "Fall" followed by "Pit".  Like, there's practically a little story right there in those four words. So cool.

My plan then, is to really try to be inspired each week by it's prompt. Since I previously mentioned that I'm planning for my dungeon to be the ruins of a long-dead Dwarf city, I think "Ancient" is exactly the perfect jumping off point for week one.  I'm already getting ideas about what that means.

Over on the Dungeon23 Subreddit (did you know that was a thing? Of course, it's a thing!), there's a growing list of great resources for dungeon makers. One post by Ben Nielson brought his game Wicked Ones to my attention. It's described as "a Forged in the Dark tabletop RPG about a group of fantasy monsters building a dungeon."  That sounds pretty cool and I might check it out to play.  But it's also got a handy little guide for actually drawing a dungeon that I'll likely use. 

There's also the Master Dungeon Mapping Key from Save vs Dragon, which has a more classic feel. I'll likely pick and choose from both and other resources.

I can only imagine I'm going to want lots and lots of random tables for room ideas, room shapes, dungeon stocking and pretty much everything else.  I've got ideas for stuff, but probably not 365 good ideas. Luckily there's TONS of this stuff out there. I'll definitely use the 5E DMG, the Creating a Dungeon section of the OSE rules, and much of the wealth of other resources available. I'm also keen to make use of Raging Swan's Dungeon Dressing, which I bought a while ago, but haven't had occasion to deploy.

I have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to resources to inspire and propel me forward on the project. I'm very excited to get going.  Just a few more days! 

I'm going to use a bit of that time to think about system. While the game world that this dungeon will inhabit is being played in using 5E, I think I'm very unlikely to build this dungeon with the intention of running it in 5E. I think I'm far more likely to have BX / OSE in mind when designing and stocking the dungeon. I feel like that will make it more universally usable. My experience has been that if something is designed for OSE / BX, it's usually very easy (sometimes trivially so) to convert it for any old school game. And it's probably not that hard to run an OSE dungeon in 5E should anyone want to. 

More on that tomorrow, I think!  Thanks for reading!

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