Gryzz Loves Games

Real life!  No! Regular life has gotten slightly busier this week, so I've had to miss a few days and catch up. As I've said a few times, I'm not going to beat myself up over this. The goal is to keep moving forward and perfect daily progress isn't required. Fortunately, I'm caught up again as of now! So, to catch up here are the rooms I've done since my last post: 1-18 Dress Shop This is the remains of what was once a luxurious dress shop. It served the high end clientele of this part of the city with garments of silk and satin. Now it belongs to the goblins. This is one of two rooms controlled by the Bloodfeather Goblins, who are based in the house from week 1. They have a bit of an outpost here and are busily making plans to push further into Kobold territory. In this room, they've found several partially preserved dresses and the goblins here have taken to wearing them. This actually raises their profile in the band considerably. The leader of this outpo...

The Apothecary A fairly simple room today, actually. This was once an apothecary's shop. Over the centuries the shelves and cabinets have all fallen apart. The various potions, poultices and cures have run together on the floor and mixed up into three Living Potions. There's a bit of treasure in this place, but explorers will have to get past the potions somehow! Living Potion AC 8[11], HD  1, Att 1 x touch (splash effect), THAC0  18 (+1), MV (30') (10'), SV D12 W13 P14 B15 S16, ML 12, AL N, XP  50, NA 1d4 Splash Effects (d4) 1: as Potion of Diminuation 2: as Potion of Gaseous Form 3: Adhesion: covered in sticky slime for 2 hours 4: Trip Out: Hallucinations. No actions for 1 hour So, that's it!  Like I said, super simple today. See you tomorrow!

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood! I thought it was high time that we had some real dungeon passages and rooms. By that, I mean that for the first two weeks I've been focusing on one big building for the whole week. That was by design. I wanted a big house and a big church. These are two prominent buildings in an upper-class part of the city and I wanted to give them the level of detail that they deserved. But this is supposed to be a city, so we need a lot of roads and buildings and such. However, that poses a problem for how I'm working right now. I really wanted to fit a fairly sizable neighborhood into a single week's worth of development. I also need to bring the Kobolds on stage. I've been talking about them as another faction since week 1 and haven't placed even one of them so far. I think a warren of twisting alleys, and small buildings make for a very good home for a band of Kobolds. Seven rooms, just doesn't seem like enough though. I wanted...

 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...

The Church forgives. I missed my first day of the project yesterday. It was a long day at work followed by a frustratingly time-consuming problem in our house. By that time that was all fixed, I just didn't have the energy to work on Greystone. But, the point of this project is not to be perfect. It's to try. As I've mentioned before , perfect is the enemy of done.  And the point of this project is to produce something.  So, I'm forgiving myself. And the dungeon will forgive me as well. I caught up today and am proud to say that week two is complete!  14 rooms done, 351 to go. :) I'll do a little week in review later (possibly tomorrow), but for now here's what I did today. Today, we finally learned what's going on with that skylight above the altar. As it turns out, it's part of the solution to accessing a hidden treasure. The skylight can be opened. Doing so will drop a quantity of dirt and debris down on the tribuna.  This reveals a vertical shaft cli...

The Rectory In addition to running the church,  His Excellency  also lived here. The rectory (a word for the place where a priest lives) is his private chamber. It's attached to the Sacristia as well. At any given time, there's a 50% chance that the bishop is here, rather than in the Sacristia. In life, this room was his private residence and he won't take kindly to interlopers. Though I'm using a lot of Catholic terminology for the building, this bishop certainly didn't live by a vow of poverty. In addition to a large and (once) comfortable bed, there's a large trunk.  This is filled with the decayed remains of fine silk garments. Under all of that, there are rings, gold and silver chains and other pieces of jewelry. There's also a stash of coins. The crowning glory of the room, however, is the portrait a large and perfectly preserved portrait still hangs on the wall here. It's a beautiful rendering of a magnificent Dwarven priest (the Bishop himself, i...

His Excellency, the Bishop of Greystone. Room 1-11 is the Sacristia, which is a kind of preparation and storage area for the church clergy. There are two very valuable items here. First, is a set of holy vestments. These are some fancy robes which may have some monetary value. But the real value is for a cleric.  These clothes are a magic item. When worn by a cleric, they grant the ability to cast Cure Light Wounds once per day as if it was memorized. The other bit of treasure here is the Holy Book. This is a perfectly preserved canon of the faith. It is inlaid with gold and gems. It's very valuable. This treasure is not unguarded, however! His Excellency the Bishop of Greystone is here, along with several of his acolytes. They're undead now, but still keen to guard their treasures. Undead can't enter the sanctuary, which is probably a source of frustration to these still-devout priests. Perhaps they don't know that they're undead or corrupted. I'm actually stil...

SANCTUARY!! Sorry, just channeling my inner Quasimodo there. Anyway, names for different parts of churches vary a lot, but one of the names for the large gathering area which includes the altar is the sanctuary . I think it's a wonderful word, so for this temple, that's definitely what it's called! Yesterday, I mentioned a tiny ritual which needs to be done before entering the sanctuary. Any person entering the sanctuary must pour a dipper of water from the font in 1-8 over their head first. If they do this, that person is "anointed" for one day. Anyone entering the sanctuary who is not anointed is, instead, "reproached". They have the disfavor of the ancient deity upon them. The mechanical effect of being "reproached" is that they have disadvantage on all attack rolls. Disadvantage, of course, is a rule from 5th edition D&D. It's not RAW for Old School Essentials or any 20th century D&D that I'm aware of.  However, I think it...

Week 2!!  We've moving on from the house and into The Temple. My overall plan for the month is taking shape as well.  Since there's a three day "week" at the end of the month, my plan is to design four seven-room sectors and connect them all together with the three remaining rooms.  So, we've already got The House and now I'm adding The Temple. Both of these buildings are adjoined by some kind of plaza, yet to be designed.  Part of the work of week 5 will be figuring out what that looks like, but we're not there yet! So, Sunday was a bit of a bear and I just didn't have time to get everything done. I made a start on room 1-8, but I had to finish it and 1-9 today.  But I'm cool with that.  As soon as I click "Publish" on this post, I'll be back on track. Since this is a fairly well-to-do part of town, I thought that a place of worship would be a good next building to put here.  I'm working from a fairly classic and simple design he...

Week 1 went great! I wrote and posted every day (already not true for Week 2!). I love the idea that (currently) the only way into the city from the wilderness is through a window into a bedroom. This leads into a house that's been taken over by refugee goblins. I'm particularly pleased with the with the privy, if I'm honest. LOL. I knew there would be a privy, but had no idea what (if anything) else to put there.  So I turned to the random room stocking table in Old School Essentials.  It came up as "Trap".  So now I had to figure out why the heck there would be a trap in the john. Why would anyone want to prevent someone from going into the privy?  Oh wait, what if the trap is to stop something coming out of the privy! That's how I found out that these goblins are recent immigrants to this level of the dungeon. And whatever chased them up the privy chute must be bad enough that they want to trap the entrance.  Super cool! I also like the idea of a servant...

First week done!  And I just barely made it. It's after 11:00 PM here on the 7th. Busy day.  But!! I'm posting my 7th room on day 7, so I'm pleased with that. The last room of the ruin of this Dwarven house would've been the first room you'd enter if visiting it while the house was occupied. The Great Hall is where the family would've received their guests and entertained them before going through to the Dining Room. There would have been comfortable furniture, book-filled shelves, rich rugs & tapestries, and warm hearths. All of that's gone now, of course.  Mostly what's here now are goblins. Theoretically, they're on guard duty. But mainly they're sleeping, gambling, fighting, eating and doing all manner of other unmentionable things. Attached to the room, is a small foyer which opens out onto the plaza. There is one thing of value here, however. An ancient tarnished bronze chandelier is suspended from the ceiling from a rusted iron chain. ...

Major remodel today! I wasn't at all happy with the layout of the last couple of rooms, so I moved them around! I think this feels much better as a logically laid out residence for a well-to-do Dwarven family. Those who have been following along will see that yesterday's Master Bedroom is now in the northern part of the house, along with the other bedroom. I may re-orient 1-1's window to face north. But that literally just occurred to my while typing this! :) Anyway, in addition to moving some things around, I added a room today, so I'm still on pace! 1-6 is the Servants' Quarters / Service Entrance. There's a heavy, locked, metal door that opens out onto the street. Stairs lead up to the north and west, ending in doors. These appear to be normal doors on the stairs side, but are actually secret doors facing the rooms they open into. This was designed so that servants could come and go from these rooms discretely. They also have had the effect of hiding this ent...

Today, I discovered the Master Bedroom.  If the Goblin Boss isn't gorging himself on roast beetle or abusing his underlings, he'll be here lounging (or sleeping) on the broken dwarven bed. He's got two pet wolves which he keeps in here most of the time as well.  This is also where he's stashed most of what's been looted from the house.  Under the bed are 12 silver trade bars (stamped with an insignia of the ancient Dwarven Empire), a beautiful game board and pieces wrought of onyx & ivory and a silver, jeweled hand mirror. To make the keys slightly more practical, I'm underlying anything that has a stat block (just goblins and wolves so far). Still no name for the Goblin Boss, but I'll come up with that soon. See you tomorrow!

Today, I learned more about the goblins inhabiting this section of the dungeon. I roughed them out as a faction using the Four Blanks Method from GFC's DND YouTube Channel. You should definitely check out that channel. It is small, but mighty. So, here's what we know about these goblins- Faction: Bloodfeather Goblins Objective: Increased territory Obstacle: Kobolds (TBD) Method: Raids/Warfare This is a discrete band of goblins, who hold some territory here in the dungeon, but would like more. We already know from a previous day that they actually moved here from further down in the dungeon. If they're relatively recent arrivals here, perhaps there are more of them somewhere, thus the need for more space. The chief obstacle to their expansion is kobolds. I'd already had it in the back of my mind that there would be kobolds in the dungeon, but know I know for sure. There must be a population of them somewhere and I assume that the two territories abut one another. The go...

The first monsters of the dungeon! Just south of the bedroom is the kitchen. It features a double-wide fireplace. There are three goblins here, roasting a dead fire beetle over a spit in the fireplace. There's some various broken furniture around the place, some of which is being used as firewood.  The goblins have made themselves comfortable here, setting up what pass for "beds" in their estimation: piles of stinking furs. Each of the goblins has a few coins (where did they get them? Goblins don't mint currency do they?). There's an adjoining pantry, but it's been long-since ransacked. Across the hall, I've already drawn in tomorrow's room, but keying that will wait until Day 4. See you then!

 "To the loo?  Why didn't you go before we left?!" I'm just building this dungeon naturalistically at this point.  Whatever feels like the right or logical next room is what I build. So, after the bedroom, it felt like there should be a privy. It's a simple room with a stone bench on the north wall. The bench has a hole in it. This is the top of shaft that goes all the way down to level 2, where I think the cesspit will be.  Or at least that's where the cesspit was . I don't think it's a working cesspit at this point.  Something else lives down there.  This is evidenced by the trap that I randomly rolled for this room. Someone has set up a trip line that will drop a net full of heavy stones right onto the privy bench. Who would do such a thing? And why? To answer that question, we need to know what kind of creatures live on this level. I've always had a soft spot for goblins, so they're going to be an important part of this level's ecosyste...

Today is the day! The first room of my Dungeon23 megadungeon is set! Greystone was the capital city of a long-dead Dwarven empire. Like so many Dwarven cities it was built into the side of a mountain. In the centuries since its abandonment, much of it has collapsed. Additionally, time, erosion, earthquakes and other factors have hidden virtually all of the features that would have been visible from outside the mountains.  The main city gates, alternative entrances, guard towers, etc have all collapsed or been long covered by the landslides, etc. A recent quake has shaken loose enough dirt to reveal a window. One single, humble window looking east from the side of the mountain. It takes a serious climb to get high enough on the mountain to access it, but it's there for any intrepid (or foolhardy) souls willing to explore. That window looked out from a bedroom in an upper class home. This bedroom is our first room. There's a thick layer of dust over everything, some broken furnit...

Last prep day before the project starts! Today, I just want to think a little bit about the overall structure of the megadungeon (but not over think it, of course!), and how that fits into the practical process of building it out room by room. As I've mentioned several times, this dungeon is going to be centered on Greystone , the greatest city of the First Imperium of the Dwarves. Greystone was the center of Imperial society in its age. It was massive and sprawling, the pinnacle of Dwarven engineering in its time.  The First Imperium was very different to the current Imperium, however. One of the most notable differences will be language. Third Imperium Dwarves speak Dwarven  which is actually a patois of Giantspeech.  Is this a result of their centuries of enslavement at the hands of the Fire Giants. During their time under the giants almost all of Dwarven culture was lost, including their history, customs and language. As a result, virtually no current-era Dwarves can ...

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 n...

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: Ancient Death Sunken Love Empire Heavy Rural Darkness Bloom Rust Noise Childhood Time Excess Decay City Factory Flood Sleep Cold Ash Touch Meat Solitude Growth Greed Luck Fall Pit Chaos Laughter Smoke Forgotten Library Ocean Song Roots Bones Hangman Blood Prophet Idol Door Light Stars Bridge Mask Cut Sacrifice Incense Rise 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 "Lu...