Preparing for Dungeon23, Part 4: So, What?

We're almost there! I went to bed last night thinking about this project and woke up this morning with it still on my mind.  I think that's a good sign!

Today I'm thinking more about system and setting, finalizing some decisions.

System first. I'm definitely going to build this dungeon with an OSR style game in mind. I've played a ton of 5E and though I like it, I've come to really understand what I don't like about it.  That's not with this post is about, so I'm not going to go into a lot of detail.  Suffice it to say that I think Old School Essentials works very well as a system for the kind of experience I'm going for with this project and I'm less convinced that 5E will be a good fit.

I know there are hundreds of other systems, but these are the ones I'm most familiar with and most likely to actually play. I have to design for that purpose. As I mentioned yesterday, I'm also thinking about portability to other systems.  I've not played Into the Odd, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Knave or any other OSR games.  But I'm familiar enough with their design principles to be confident that if I design for OSE, the dungeon will be playable using a wide range of OSR games.

This topic dovetails with the topic of setting, however. In a previous post, I mentioned that I'd like to place this dungeon in the ruins of the ancient Dwarven city of Greystone. That feels like a good fit for the kind of tone I'm going for. But there's a bit of hitch, story wise. One of the quirks of my Third Imperium setting is that Humans are a relatively recent arrival in the Imperium. For most of imperial history, the were unknown, having originated very far away from Imperial lands.  But, of course, in OSE most classes are human.  "Dwarf" is simply a class unto itself, whereas Fighter, Cleric, Thief, etc are all humans. That means most of the PCs are likely to be human, which would seem weird if the adventure takes place in the early Third Imperium.

I've had two revelations about this. First, though most of the long-lived races consider humans to be a recent addition to Imperial society, "recent" is a relative term.  By the time of the current campaign, humans have been in the Imperium for over five hundred years.  That's a very long time for humans. So, it would be very easy to place this adventure anywhere in the five centuries since humans arrived.

My second, and most important revelation can be summed up in two words, however: so what? Like, who cares? Is the detailed (probably overly detailed) history of Imperial Dwarven society going to play a pivotal role in the running of this dungeon. Probably not. It's meant to be a mega-dungeon adventure. Yes, it takes place in the ruins of an ancient Dwarf city (at least partially), but that doesn't mean players will have to read a long treatise on Imperial history to enjoy the game. Those details probably don't matter at all and can easily be fudged to fit the larger story if necessary. 

Additionally, who's to say that I'm definitely going to run this adventure using only OSE Classic Fantasy? Advanced Fantasy has the rules for class and race as separate things. So, if I wanted to set the dungeon crawl in a time before the humans arrived, it should be easy to allow players to choose from the various other races and still have the variety of different class options.

Also, getting caught up on a minor detail and overthinking it is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what this project is supposed to be about. I cannot let that kind of thing happen and derail my progress. It's so easy to get into my own head and fall into an analysis paralysis kind of situation. I have to try hard to avoid that our it's going to torpedo the whole project.

So, I'm just skipping over the "problem".  So what?  Who cares if there's some minor bit of esoteric lore that doesn't totally jive with what I'm working on?  It truly doesn't matter to the project at all.

Last thing for today. In the spirit of "stacking the deck", I did go ahead and print out all 12 of the Mega Monthly Dungeon Maker booklets for this project. As soon as I click publish on this blog, I'll start stapling them together. So on January 1, when I draw the first dungeon room, I'll already have space designated for the other 364 rooms to come!

OK, time to get stapling.  Thanks for reading and see you tomorrow!

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