So this appeared on twitter the other day, a challenge for 2023.
A blog post fleshed out the idea a bit more:
A dungeon room a day for all of 2023.
The other day I posted on twitter about a cool little project I’m working on for 2023. Essentially, I’m doing a dungeon room a day, every day, and keeping track of it in a little weekly calendar.
Well, I love dungeons and megadungeon play, but writing a megadungeon is difficult! It takes a lot of energy and it’s hard to know when to work on it and for how long. This simplifies things.
A dungeon room a day, every day, for 2023. That’s 365 rooms. I’ll do a level a month, so 12 levels. Every week is a little area of 7 rooms, so I can keep my focus small.
I’m using the amazing Hobonichi Weeks which if you don’t know is a great little notebook designed by the writer of the Earthbound/Mother game series. It’s got great paper, and the Weeks version is the smaller more portable notebook. Essentially on a single spread you’ve got seven days on the left and then an open piece of graph paper on the right. That’s perfect for a key of seven rooms and a map. Here’s another one that ship’s from the US. Got a worldbuilder’s notebook you’ve been dying to use? Now’s the time.
You don’t have to use this notebook, don’t get hung up on the details here. Any old notebook will do. I just happen to have an addiction to Japanese stationery and no real need to journal, so this is what I’m doing, dungeon as journal.
There’s some great things you can do here too: instead of room numbers, you can number them with the date. This makes rooms pretty easy to find and reference within your notebook. Don’t need a megadungeon? Try twelve small dungeons! The point is to do a little bit of writing a day. Some tips:
Don’t overthink it. Don’t make a grand plan, just sit down each day and focus on writing a good dungeon room.
Generators are your friend. The point isn’t to get stuck writing the perfect room, the point is to write a room. Randomize the monster, treasure, whatever items you need. Use “Tricks, Traps, and Empty Rooms,” by Courtney Campbell. There’s a billion d100 lists on Elfmaids & Octopi. Take rooms from dungeons you love. Just get the rooms down on paper.
If you can’t think of what to write that day just write “Empty Room,” see how easy that is?
365 rooms written like “3 orcs, 25 gold pieces.” is better than 5 rooms written like “In this beautiful hand carved obsidian room sit 3 orcs arguing over a dice game. 25gp sit on the table, each of them…” See what I’m getting at? The goal is the finish line. Just get to the finish line. Trust me.
If you want to keep up with my progress on Twitter, mastodon, or cohost, use the hashtag #dungeon23. Post your results too! Post a room a day on twitter so other people can steal it and put it in their journals! Become a collector of rooms, you don’t have to be the well.
The greatest creative advice I ever got was “have something to show for your time.” I’ve found a lot of success on always shipping projects every year. This is one of those projects, once you realize you can create a dungeon of this magnitude, your whole world opens up with what you can do. And it’s insanely fun too!
#dungeon23, I’ll see you on the other side.
Need a weekly prompt to carry you through? Here’s 52 prompts to keep you motivated:
tangentwithtanner
turnnoffyourmind
origamiaround
kianamaiart
annaxmalina
stormborns
