Using Wordle to write a Dungeon23 week. I go into detail about thought processes as the rooms gradually built up into a location, and principles for continuously writing rooms but re-editing.
This week's dungeon was a fantasy dungeon based on dungeon clichés. I originally thought I would just use the actual clichés unadorned, but it turned into a mix of using them and subverting them.
Still at it. Notes on my current pen setup. Dungeons: a swamp casino, a lying bird, a train carriage, a couple of vaults for Vaarn.
Beer leaks, giant heart, St Pinnius, tearooms, archival mummies.
Notes on weeks five to nine of my Dungeon23 project - Frixion pens, getting bored with starships, and more.
I got bored of the "haunted oasis" that I started with - also I finished that - and moved on to a different idea that was more conducive to a semi-endless pseudo-dungeon. This starts out in an abandoned area of Absalom Station, in the Spike, the vast volume of "could be anything" below the populated areas. (I described Absalom Station as "a cyberpunk city on top of a megadungeon".) I envisaged starting at an entrance to an art gallery in an otherwise uninhabited area, previously occupied by an anarchist art collective, but which has mysteriously gone very quiet (perhaps not having been heard of for decades). A serious dimensional incursion resulted in super powerful alien entities possessing a number of carnival costumes that had been built and improvising on their intended themes, usually very badly and destructively.
I've now finished off the "Haunted Oasis" section of my Dungeon23, which means I have no idea what to do next. I planned to just do chunks of "dungeon" for Dungeon23, on the basis that (a) I'd get bored of the theme of any megadungeon and (b) I'd never use it anyway, so I would be better off writing a bunch of smaller locations which I could pick from. The flaw in this is that it means having to think of something new each time I finish a chunk, which I now have.
In weeks 0 (i.e. the last week of 2022, which included 1st Jan 2023) and 1, I've been working on a Haunted Oasis. I began with the setting being the Starfinder desert world of Akiton because I thought I might run a Starfinder game again. Then I got annoyed at an interaction with... _people_ associated with Starfinder, and decided not to set it there. Then I decided that it was silly to be put off a game because of _people_ so I re-set it there. It doesn't really matter, it can be any sci-fi desert environment.
So I am planning to do the Dungeon23 challenge next year. I don't want to overprep for this because it's a long time and any plans I make now I will definitely get bored with over 2023, but it's useful to have some basic themes set up to guide me as to what I will be doing every day, even if I completely change them in practice.
Some free hand-drawn Hex Kit tiles that solve some issues I was having with other tiles.