Dungeon23: Greystone - Week 2 Review

 Week 2 is complete! I'm so happy with how it turned out. I have to admit that on Sunday, I was not feeling particularly confident.  I knew I wanted to make a church, but I really had no ideas beyond that. When I was growing up, we'd go to visit my grandparents in central Wisconsin.  While there, we'd go to their church on Sunday. This was St. Francis Xavier Church in Mosinee. My memory of that church became the template for the church in my dungeon.

I say it was my memory of that church because I couldn't find a lot of reference photos of the actual church. Though while searching, I found out that there is a St. Francis Xavier Church in Superior, WI. That church as a gorgeous fan-vault ceiling which is what inspired me to put such a ceiling in the dungeon.

Anyway, I'm not religious anymore, but I remembered a lot of terminology from my younger days and it was a ton of fun creating this church by amalgamating my memories with stuff I learned online. The whole thing really came together quite organically.  I had a very loose plan, but everything evolves as I work. A perfect example of that is The Bishop. I didn't plan for there to be a boss undead in this place.  But, I was looking at the OSE Monsters book and the very first entry is Acolyte.  It's a 1 HD NPC. Nothing particularly interesting.  But the entry said that groups of four or more are led by a higher level leader. Then it just clicked. I upped an acolyte to level 2, noted that he's undead and then everything flowed from there.  Who was this guy?  What was he like? What does he want?  These are all just questions that I asked myself and let the answers guide the work.

The altar puzzle also just kind of grew as I worked. I knew I wanted to have a special treasure in here, but wanted it to be difficult to get. Recently, in my 5e campaign, I put a holy relic inside of an altar and a PC had to expend some spell slots or something to open it. I really like the altar-as-hiding place thing, so I did it again. The idea of the skylight and the key and stuff just sort of grew out of that. It's haphazard sometimes, but I feel like this is just how the work of this project is going to go. As things occur to me, I'll include them and change things as needed to accomodate.

Here's hoping I can keep doing that for another fifty weeks! :)

According to Sean McCoy's suggested prompts, the theme for week 3 is "Sunken". Week 1 was "Ancient" I feel like that was a cheat for me since this whole level is ancient, but it still fit.  Week 2 was "Dead".  That's lucky because I'd actually forgotten all about that until the church (with all of the dead things in it) was already just about done! :)

"Sunken", though.  I'm just not sure what to do with at. I know I don't have to follow these prompts, but I'm trying to where I can. I was thinking about doing some shops for week three. Like a small marketplace with three or four shops. I haven't used the kobolds at all yet, and I think it's high time they made an appearance.  So, I'm thinking week three might be a series twisted streets and alleys with various modest homes and shops.  But with only seven key entries, that seems like it will be a bit small. On the other hand, I could possibly stretch the residential area over two weeks. But how to make it "Sunken"?

I dunno. LOL. As I've mentioned many times, this is the sort of thing that can hang me up forever and I really don't want that.  So, I'd probably do better to just get started and see where I end up, right?

Right!

I guess that's it for the Week 2 Review! Thanks for reading and stay tuned for Week 3!



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