Planning out the dungeon for Gygax 75 Challenge using the weekend prompts from #RPGaDAY2020:
SHADE & light
The dungeon is the underground structures below where the mall used to be, amidst the ruins of the cyberpunk dystopia. A bunch of these steps are not done but that's fine, the Gygax 75 booklet specifically says that unfinished stuff each week is ok and you just move on and come back to it later, citing Hemingway's technique of ending writing sessions in the middle of a sentence so it's easy to start up again when you come back to it.
Tasks:
i. "Describe the entrance to the dungeon in 7-10 words".
Collapsed ramp into parking garage overgrown with metallic thorns.
ii. "Set aside at least one page of your journal for a point-to-point map."
I did this as well as drawing a quick sketch of the overall structure for myself just to keep the relative locations of things straight in my head. Also I'll probably run it as a pointcrawl anyway.
iii. "For each level, include d6+6 rooms/areas and connect them"
iv. "Include d3+1 ways up or down per level"
v. "Come up with three themes (one per level). Roll d3+2 for each to generate a budget"
So each level has some randomly-determined numbers. I rolled em all and kept track in a table:
| Dungeon Level: | Parking Garage | Subway | Sewers and Undercity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rooms/Areas: | 12 | 9 | 10 |
| Exits: | 3 | 2 | 2 |
| Theme Budget: | 3 | 5 | 3 |
The themes for each level--if this is an introductory dungeon in this setting then I want it to explore some of the core aesthetics of the setting.
Level one: the parking garage. Theme: cursed vegetation. The occult calamity did all sorts of weird things, but one of the most omnipresent is the fusion of electronics with nature. Wiresnakes, electric berries, metallic thorns. The parking garage, being the level closest to the surface, will have the most contact with the "natural" world above and so will be overgrown and infested with weird occultronic flora and fauna.
Level two: the subway. Theme: technocultists. This is a way to explore the "occult" part of the setting. There is opportunity for some truly strange imagery, not just hooded figures and electric devil skeletons but also rituals and bargains and maybe an actual evil computer. Plus maybe the cultists are in the subway area because the connection to "transit" is important--are they trying to get somewhere else? Bring something here? Change something?
Level three: the undercity and sewers. Theme: shade and light (ha, there's the #RPGaDAY2020 prompts!). I'm basing this on my memory of the Seattle Underground Tour, of the city underneath the new one built on top. A cyberpunk dystopia absolutely would have layers of old buildings at the bottom. This idea of a huge futuristic neon world sitting on top of the ruins of the past literally left in the dark is very evocative. I was thinking things like areas of magical darkness, and bottomless pits, and will-o-the-wisps-but-they're-tiny-drones, and some kind of creature called a "candlesnuffer".
vi. "Make a list of 11 different monsters and place them".
TODO but for a start, there's: wiresnakes, technocultists, electric devil skeletons, candlesnuffers, wispdrones, rats, sewercrawlers, underdwellers, memory ghosts, empty spines, and man-eating plants.
vii. "Spread d6 features throughout the dungeon."
I rolled 4.
viii. "For each room/area, note whether there is treasure."
TODO
ix. "Name three wondrous items and locate them in the dungeon."
What kind of stuff can I pull from the source material to use here?
x. "Spend any remaining theme budget adding detail."
What kinds of sensory details fit into the areas of this map? And specific things to see?
Extra Credit:
"Map out all three levels on graph paper."
No that's hard let me just do a pointcrawl.
"Create a wandering monster table."
11 slots, probably different from the ones I stocked the dungeon with in step vi. WELP time to reskin a bunch of random monsters from the old books.
Lots of things to come back to!
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