Stocking Level 1 of a Dungeon in 0.053 Seconds

-

February 22, 2024

< a Megadungeon <;">

Though it's not open to the public (yet?) and just for friends, here's the campaign pitch: 

<;">


<;">

There is an island at Urth's north pole. It is the last truly wet place. The future was once buried here, in the form of millions and millions of seeds for posterity. But now they have sprouted. They have grown together, genes splicing, mixing, and blending. They have grown, both up and down and into other beings as well, creating a bizarre ecosystem. The old vault now lies open, its depths waiting to be explored.

This is hope. Urth may be restored from its xeric state. This is wealth. Some of these plants hold water very efficiently. This is danger. The proliferation risks overrunning every other living thing on the planet. This is history. Many of these plants have not flowered for epochs. This is the Orelian Gardens, an open table megadungeon set in Vaarn.

Inspiration:
- Annihilation (Jeff Vandermeer)
- Dune (Herbert)
- Chimera Ants (of Hunter x Hunter)
- Nausicaa (Miyazaki)
- Svalbard global seed vault
- childhood reading of plant and animal guidebooks

Things to pique or drain interest:
- obstacle/dilemma i.e. "traps"
- faction play!
- many (hopefully) interesting items
- strange plants and creatures!

<;">


<;">

I'm running this in the system Vaults of Vaarn, which is a Dune/Book of the New Sun inspired Knave hack. I had the dungeon idea on a flight recently, and decided to follow through with it.

<;">


<;">

But then the problem arose: I must draw and stock rooms.  I drew the map by hand, which was fun and produced a good result, I think. (Not posting in case my players look here). But then the stocking.

<;">


< Procedures <;">

The whole shtick of this dungeon is mutation. So I figured a good way to stock monsters and NPCs is to create a bestiary of plant-animal hybrids that would be roaming. I also wanted to have an inspiration point for each room. The culmination of this line of thought was to roll a couple random tables for each room, and fill in more specific details later on. I decided to rely heavily on Maze Rats tables, and use any that might fit.

<;">


<;">

So here's my stocking procedure. Roll the outer 1 and 2, and when rolling 2, use one of the options. (x#) refers to relative probabilities (e.g. four times as likely). MR refers to a maze rats table.

<;">

  1. Roll for room basic description (e.g. office room, research lab, etc.) and two plants for general inspiration

  2. Roll for room contents

    1. Stairs down

    2. Seed Capsule (a level up for one player)

    3. trap (x4)

      1. Roll for MR Trap effect, which could be a monster

    5. monster (x4)

      1. Roll for terrestrial animal (MR) and plant (my own table), to be combined
      2. Roll for monster ability (MR)
      3. Roll for monster level (HD and bonuses in the system)

    7. trap and monster (x2)

    8. empty (x6)

    9. treasure (x2)

Then I have a lot to work with for inspiration. Enough, I think that I could create some interesting rooms. I also made a random encounter table, but I did this entirely from my own head, and put my factions here. I may even just not worry about doing any further elaboration and playing with the basic descriptions.

I recently listened to a Marc Miller (creator of Traveller) interview where he talked about the Universal Planetary Profile in Traveller, which is random tables for planet generation. He said you don't need anything more explained than the table results to play, but you do need imagination. That's what I imagine for my own usage of these results.

<;">

So how did I get 40 rooms stocked in 1/20th of a second? I wrote a python script to do the rolling, of course. So yes, this clickbaity title is quite the gotcha.

 

PS script available here

Comments

Post a Comment

Thinking Small: The Fictional World has a Surprising Amount of Detail

-

March 13, 2024

Probably a year or two ago I read a blog post from outside the DnD-sphere, Reality has a surprising amount of detail . It stuck with me all this time, and eventually the little worm in my brain that this post spawned crawled and ate its way through my neatly compartmentalized mind into my DnD brain. I haven't reread the article since my first reading, but the title is what really stuck with me. The worm has digested this idea, and the result is a little nugget of an idea I want to expand upon here. The blog post talks first about how constructing a set of wooden steps, in a precise manner, is actually quite difficult. Figuring out how the pieces of wood should be cut, fit together, and secured take some planning and precision. This is all to make stairs that simply fit together. Bearing weight is another manner. The OSR is all about having a "realistic" world - one that operates on consistent internal logic, even with fantastical elements. That means if you really wanted

Read more

Empty Rooms Should be Just That and the 5 Room Dungeon

-

September 01, 2024

Just a quick explanation of an OSR dungeon design principle for those unfamiliar. This is maybe not a well-touted idea, but I've been brewing on this idea lately. Of course, this is all centered around how I want to play, run... etc... Take with coarse grained salt if you think your goals are different. If you've got a dungeon, you should have some empty rooms that don't.… do anything. As in, there is nothing 'to do' in the room. I have been brewing this idea based on what Luke Gearing said in his interview on the "Into the Megadungeon" podcast. I'll just rehash what Luke conveyed in my listening: Empty rooms provide a place to rest (my words) Empty rooms give space to a dungeon so that you don't die at every turn Empty rooms are tactically important for managing encounters, especially in conjunction with loops   Luke gave an easy example of how to utilize empty rooms: You pass through some empty rooms, and eventually encounter a big room with a

Read more

Thinking Small Adventures

-

February 05, 2024

 I want to explain a philosophy for adventure design I have developed on, I hope: thinking small. Honey I Shrunk the Adventure! Many good adventures give lots of play out of small packages. This is not a new idea. The 3 hex campaign start and 5 room dungeon are known for giving creativity via constraints (a well-touted idea). Brevity in the adventure text is also a much-loved and effective way to give creativity through vagueries. I see these as a part of a core rule of thumb: do more with less. I think this is a great design philosophy. I would like to push it a bit further, and to a potentially new aspect of the rule of thumb, that deserves just as much attention. Before, I have written a  scenario premise , which you can get a whole session out of (in most cases), and I've mentioned before having a cool idea . I want to propose a design philosophy: have the core danger of a setting fit into a single coherent description, and a summary of an adventure location fit into a paragrap

Read more