#dungeon24

[brinefathomcaves]

Brinefathom Caves Level 6, Week 8

6.76: The False Demilich

6.77: The Lake of Tears

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!

[pandiongames]

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!

[bees-n-bones]

dungeonFebruary: a retrospective

here they are, all four maps edited together into a single dungeon over two floors!

it was a lot of fun to draw it, highlights (of both rooms and monsters) and further thoughts under the cut :D

first things first; some rooms

(you might need to click on each picture to read/see the whole thing)

just some personal favorites, rooms 15, 21, and 25 are stolen from references to stuff (if you recognize what: <3), 6 and 20 were both really fun to put together, and room 29 is the last possible trap of the dungeon :3

next up; monsters!

the first two are room spesific, the latter three random encounters, hence the numbers being written different, picking out just 5 to share was kinda hard, but im really happy with theese, yet again some of theese are stolen from inspired by stuff

now; for my thoughts on this whole thing

i had a lot of fun drawing and designing this, so much so that im kinda sad to be done, the ritual of sitting down to draw each day or to catch up on a few days was nice, and i really like designing silly little rooms and filling them with references i know my players wont pick up on

i might pick this format back up for a month or two this year and im Definetly doing dungeon25 next year, but im really happy i did this instead of trying to catch up on dungeon24 in full, doing it this way let me figure out stuff like how i want to format my notes for a larger dungeon, how many extra notebooks ill need (one for ideas and one beastiary, for now), and some general design rules for myself

all in all if you have read this far and think it looks kinda fun i say go for it! you dont need to follow a spesific month/year, thats just something i feel like doing, the point is to have a little creative challange to do each day for a set amount of days :D

[brinefathomcaves]

Brinefathom Caves Level 6, Week 5

6.45: The Painting Souls

6.46: The Golden Closet: Various rollers, brushes, and other painting implements, all sticky with hot molten gold. The lot is worth 100 gp. Empty.

6.47: The Lake of Gold

6.48: The Unholy Fountain: Grinning devil-face fountain spews unholy water into a basin. Empty.

6.49: The Fascinating Ice

6.50: The Fountain of Youth

6.51: The Tortured Souls

6.52: The Furry Statue: Lifelike statue of a fiendish ape, all covered in dark red fur—even the pedestal and surrounding floor. A creature who touches any furry surface must make a Constitution saving throw or be cursed to also sprout dark-red fur all over their body (no game effect) until the curse is removed. Empty.

6.53: The Bloody Chains: Southern slab door connected to four chains, which are strung through the ceiling and hang down in a east-west line in the center of the room. Their dangling ends end in sharp hooks coated with old dried blood. Slab door only opens when all chains are embedded in creatures’ flesh and pulled, dealing piercing damage—if each chain does not deal damage, the door will not open, no matter how hard the chains are otherwise pulled. Empty.

6.54: The Chains of Prophecy

[brinefathomcaves]

Brinefathom Caves Level 6, Week 6

6.55: The Library of Sins: Crowded with shelves of books and scrolls in no comprehensible order. Each one details the sins of a particular living mortal, minus any that were absolved by a cleric of a good or neutral god, all written in infernal. A creature can find a specific mortal’s book with an investigation check, which takes four dungeon turns. A creature attempting to alter one of the books or scrolls must succeed at a difficult Charisma save or have their ability to read and write completely removed. This effect can only be undone by greater restoration or a more powerful effect. Empty.

6.56: The Doused Flame

6.57: The Nibbled Hallway

6.58: The Gallery of Dismemberment: Stone statues of a wide variety of creatures. Part of each—a limb, a section of the head, or even fully half the body in one case—is missing, often sheared off at an odd angle. Empty.

6.59: The Red Devil

6.60: The Green Devil

6.61: The Briny Altar

6.62: The Upheld Hall: The floor of this chamber is made of glass-clear stone, under which a small army of wretched souls are holding it up on their shoulders. They cannot interact with creatures standing on the clear floor unless one of those creatures creates a hole in the floor. Empty.

6.63: The Tortured Screamers

6.64: The Fiendish Handshake: Life-sized statue of a pit fiend carved from iridescent red stone holds out a hand toward the center of the room. Its wrist and elbow joints can move. Shaking its hand raises the slab door to 6.65 for three dungeon turns. If a fiend does the shaking, the wall of force effect in 6.65 is also suppressed for three dungeon turns.

6.65: Barnabas' Cell

[brinefathomcaves]

Brinefathom Caves Level 4, Week 6

The Hellhound

The Hellhound's Crew

The Sunless Sea

Weather on the Sunless Sea

Ships of the Sunless Sea

Harmless Creatures of the Sunless Sea

[brinefathomcaves]

Brinefathom Caves Level 6, Week 4

6.36: The Alluring Entrance

6.37: The Stolen Statue: Submerged. Perfectly clear water. Plinth that obviously once held a statue, now bare. Empty.

6.38: The Morkoth Lair

6.39: The Hypnotic Tunnels: Submerged. Maze of tunnels criss-cross at strange angles. After 1d4+1 minutes, a creature finds the exit to [AREA]. Every minute a non-morkoth creature spends in them, they must make a Wisdom saving throw or be compelled to swim back to 6.38, which takes 1d4+1 rounds. Empty.

6.40: The Evil Crystal

6.41: The Ship Storage

6.42: The Crushing Pillar: Large pillar in the center of the room carved to look like a big wretched soul struggling to hold the load. One of its eyes is a button. When pressed, the pillar trembles, then crushes down with a scream and opens the secret door. It remains open for 1 hour, after which the pillar rises again with the wretched soul in a slightly different position. Lever on northwestern wall opens southern portcullis to 6.44. Empty.

6.43: The Wretched Dispenser

6.44: The Hot Box

[brinefathomcaves]

Brinefathom Level 6, Week 3

6.25: The Cold Throne: Frigid. Audible sobbing from behind northern door. Threadbare red carpet leads from double doors up to throne, pillars carved to look like flames. A creature who sits on the throne must make an Intelligence saving throw or temporarily gain the flaw “I can’t trust anyone.” The next time that creature enters combat, if they failed the saving throw, they are affected by the enemies abound spell until they save successfully, after which they lose the temporary flaw. Empty.

6.26: The Weeping Portraits

6.27: The Ribcage: Floor is bowed and uneven, looks like part of the inside of a colossal ribcage. Putting weight on a stone “rib” makes a loud sound like breaking bone. Empty.

6.28: The Acid Gallery

6.29: The Expanding Chasm: 6’ wide chasm in the middle of the room spews sulfurous smoke. Whenever a creature tries to cross it, it expands to be 100’ wide for the duration of the attempt. Change in size localized to this room; does not affect level layout.

6.30: The Sphere of Temptation

6.31: The Magic Mirror

6.32: The Blood Circle

6.33: The Contrary Doors: Stone slab doors at north and south exits. When a creature enters a space within 10’ of one of the doors, it slams down and the one on the opposite side of the room rises. Empty.

6.34: The Hand Chopper: Walls covered in bloody handprints of various shapes and sizes. Hole in the wall beside each door (2’ deep, 1 diameter). Each is ringed with magic runes casting an antimagic field inside the hole. Above the runes, “Lose a Hand, Open the Door” is carved in Infernal. At the back of each hole is a lever that must be pulled (not pushed) to open the corresponding door. When a lever is pulled, a heavy blade falls in front of it. If a creature used their limb to pull the lever, they must make a Constitution saving throw. On a failure, they lose the end of the limb—ex their hand—and take heavy slashing damage. On a success they take half damage and do not lose the extremity. When a creature loses an extremity this way, a corresponding new print appears on a wall. Empty.

6.35: The Lake of Bones

Should've probably given 6.34 its own day, but oh well. My thinking was that obvious hazards don't get their own days, and The Hole That Chops Off Your Hand is obvious, but I didn't realize how much text it would take until Saturday night, after I'd already written up 6.35. I wanted to include it because it's a hazard that can be bypassed by being a stereotypical pirate--a hook hand'll get you through the doors no problem.