Entering from the western peak, through heavy-set oaken doors, you find a long corridor with well worn cobblestone flooring. It's walls are carved with reliefs of religious scenes, depicting travelers saved on the road by a benevolent stranger. At the end of the room stands a statue of the same cloaked figure, faceless, and carrying a copper bowl of water about 3 feet wide, filled with coins.
For my first week of Dungeon26, I've started with an entrance. I deliberated a bit over if I should start with Section B (The western peak enterence) or C (The eastern peak enterence) but for reasons I'll get into, I went with option B.
I was kinda lacking for immediate inspiration: I know what I want to /get to/ with this dungeon, but how do you start? what's at the enterance? so I rolled on a room theme generator from Knave 2E. My result: Prophecy.
This excited me - a lot went wrong with this place, as in most fantasy post-apocolyptic dungeons. what if someone predicted it?
The idea I've come to is that the followers of Ilus, the god of Prophecy, were the first inhabitants of The Chaos Peaks. They built their temple to seal some great danger from bellow. It's an idea I want to carry on throughout this week of design.
So, what does the Statue actually do?
The idea is, travelers passing by would throw their gold into it's bowl to get a blessing for good fortune on the road ahead. At the time, the magic was weaker, but since it's coalesced for centuries without use, it now has a few prophecies to give directly to the players, if they're generous enough to leave a coin.
So far, I have "Beware the deep running, mercurial elixer", in reference to the Chaos Oil deeper in this dungeon - but I haven't filled out the rest of the 1d6 table. The idea is I can fill it in as the dungeon goes along with relevant advice for more complex or dangerous rooms, assuming they remember getting it.
If you want a cool cyberpunk megablock tower to populate your own dystopian city, or just need some extra characters or complications for your cyberpunk TTRPG, now is the time to grab a copy.
Back today and get:
Early access to THE 55
Digital downloads
Physical zines shipping worldwide
Notebook pages from the original #dungeon23 draft
Poster art of the cover.
Check it out. Spread the word. Tomorrow I can talk about other stuff :P
6.78: The Blood Basin: Basin stained with old dried blood. Refilling it (which requires draining a medium creature or equivalent) causes the wall the basin is on to swivel, opening a one-way secret door for one dungeon turn. Empty.
6.79: The Hot and Cold Doors: Southern half of the room is bitingly cold, northern is baking hot. Metal slab doors only stay open as long as they maintain the opposite temp (hot for southern and cold for northern). Empty.
6.80: The Heavy Weapons
6.81: The Infernal Escape
6.82: The Hanging Doors: Walls painted with frescoes of hanged pirates. Gibbet extends between northern and western doors, which have no keyhole or handles. If a corpse is hung from the gibbet’s noose (regardless of whether it was killed by the noose or not) the door that it faces opens. Empty.
6.83: The Truthful Guards
6.84: The Frozen Leviathan
6.85: The Truthful Dead: Floor carved with runes: zone of truth on entire room. Corpses of two anchor devils who appear to have frozen to death. Empty.
6.86: The Wall of Masks: Northern wall completely covered in devil masks that laugh and jeer when mortals approach them. Ten of the masks conceal buttons, which, if pressed in the correct sequence, open the secret door to 6.87. Only Ukarith knows the correct order, (1-6-8-5-4-9-7-10-3-2) but it can also be gleaned from touching the ice in 6.84. A creature who presses the buttons in the incorrect order must succeed at a Wisdom saving throw or fall prone and become incapacitated and unable to stand for one minute as they’re wracked with laughter. Empty.
6.87: Ukarith's Secret Shrine
6.88: The Tree of Hearts' Desire
(Non-key rambling under cut)
Aaaaand that's a wrap for 2024! Thank you to everyone who supported this project, especially @aranov, @bcswowbagger Decoder13 (no tumblr) @fishdavidson, @lunaofthemiste, @skinslip, @spewagepipe. Your comments, ideas, playtesting, etc. mean the world to me, and you made doing this much more rewarding.
I should have a post about what's next for the caves up in a day or two. Happy new year, mateys!
The Ruins of Castle Gygar is a 360+ room megadungeon designed for old school tabletop RPGs. It is designed with Old-School Essentials in mind but will play great with any OSR B/X compatible game, your favourite retroclone, five-ee, or fantasy heartbreaker.
The Ruins of Castle Gygar began as a #Dungeon23 project that I completed over the length of 2023. The #Dungeon23 project was an initiative to write one dungeon room a day every day for 2023, and I completed it! I then spent the next six months digitizing my notebook, refining it into a useable, runnable megadungeon.
Castle Gygar is inspired by many things, such as the original Greyhawk dungeon by Gary Gygax, the structure of the megadungeon in Nethack, as well as the maze structure dungeons of the classic Wizardry computer games.
PLEDGE NOW! Or, click below for more info!
Download a free preview here!
The Ruins of Castle Gygar will be a 64 page, 8.5" x 5.5" black-and-white staple bound zine-style book with laminated soft-touch cover, printed in the USA by Mixam. It'll be on 60lb paper so it'll be nice and thin. We'll be shipping it from the United States, and each order will be hand-packed with love.
The book is written by Onslaught Six and features cover art by Chaoclypse and will be edited by Ennie award winner Roz Leahy. The book currently has all text written and layout conventions established, and awaits editing, a layout pass and (depending on budget) additional art. Then we'll be able to go to printing and distribution.
Thank you so much for your support. We wouldn't be able to keep making TTRPG stuff without you. We sincerely thank each and every one of you who's ever donated to our Kickstarters, or bought our books. Your support is vital to us continuing to make dope shit.
Geek Gamers on Youtube is covering our Dungeon Year Journal and how she is using it in 2024.
She does a fantastic deep dive on all the features of the Journal, too!
If you're a designer or solo player, check it out:
What is the Dungeon Year Journal, you ask? It is our journal for creating one a world, community, dungeon, or anything else you'd like one detail a day for a year!
And it comes in two sizes! Condensed, with weekly spreads, and a large A4-sized 204 page journal with a dedicated entry for all 365 days!
Running and playing pre-written adventures, I don’t think I always clue in to what makes an encounter effective, not “in the moment”, anyway. I’m too focused on the moment itself to parse why what’s on the page is translating into a good time. After reviewing the text, post-session, one key ingredient seems to be whether or not the text is providing enough information to telegraph danger to players. It’s not something I always do consistently well in my own writing, but it’s something I’m more mindful of lately.
For example, I’ve just completed edits on a hazards table, where players encounter a room full of crates filled with dangerous chemicals in a laboratory setting. Originally, I focused on the hazards themselves, describing the effects of the chemicals, and what happens when the players are already exposed to the danger.
We're talking about room #5 here.
On the second pass, I made sure to include simple details, to alert the players to potential danger, or a way for them to react, or avoid the danger, even if they were unsure of the specific outcome.
Let’s have a look at each.
Chemical Hazards (1D6):
Incendiary Tar: A dark sludge slowly expands, creeping into adjacent rooms. The slightest spark will set the mud ablaze.
This one is fairly visual, easy for players to spot. There’s nothing really to tell them that it is tar, or that it is flammable, perhaps an odor could be written into this, to make it clearer. But the fact that the tar expands slowly gives players time to react, even if they do throw a fireball at it.
Explosive Reaction: Chemicals stored here are marked as highly volatile, the slightest impact will cause a violent explosion.
Here, the danger is much more sudden, explosions happen fast! Big warning signs filling the room are easy to notice and avoid. Perhaps the players could use this knowledge to their advantage, setting a trap.
Noxious Gases: Spending any time in this room will cause one to become light headed, intense nausea is soon to follow.
While not immediately evident, the gradual sickness helps to alert players to a more severe outcome, allowing them the chance to escape the area.
Acid Puddle: Recklessly treading through this room, the soles of one’s boots will be eaten away after a few minutes.
This one is probably the least telling, and speaks more to the GM than the players, leaving more work for the GM to make it fair. I’ve not explicitly written what the hazard is here, or how it might be noticed. But the stakes are not as high either. It takes some time for the acid to take effect, and, at worst, they are out of a pair of shoes. Still, I’ll admit, it’s the worst of the bunch.
Oxidizing Vapor: A pungent, yellow cloud fills the air. All metal will rust after a few minutes of exposure.
A tell that’s a bit more overt, featuring sight and smell, to alert players in multiple ways. The stakes are higher here, strolling through this room is likely to damage a players armor and weapons, making them less effective overall.
Liquid Nitrogen: A pale mist wisps across the floor. The air becomes colder upon approach. Exposed skin will become frostbitten within seconds of stepping into this room, joints will seize soon after.
Pale mist on its own might not be much of a warning, depending on where players encounter it, but given that this is an indoor area, that should put them on alert. If that’s not enough, the addition of increased cold as players approach should make it especially clear that this is not a normal room.
I could probably keep editing forever, but at the moment I’m feeling good with my progress on this kind of thing. Being able to identify that things could be better is a good place to be. I’m willing to bet that it means things will be even better on the next adventure.
I'd love to see some good examples of telegraphed danger in TTRPGs, hit me up with your favorites!
