Dungeon23: Update #1

~ Bill Turner ~ 2 Comments

I’m now just over a couple of weeks into the Dungeon23 challenge, and it’s actually going pretty well. I’m still feeling my way into the challenge, but we’ve only just begun. As it progresses, I should get a better handle on my voice in the process.

As mentioned in my first Dungeon23 post, I’m wanted to do some overland hex mapping, as in addition to dungeon design. Well, I started with some hex mapping (see images below), but then instead of delving into a dungeon, I found a keep and began mapping something above ground. The mapping and points of interest came from the Pocket Lands (and D100 Lands) tables. I figured I’d follow what the dice rolls decided.

My initial descriptions started out as if I was playing the game (as omnipotent observers) surveying the land and objects. After four or five days I switched to a more descriptive language, and dropped the “we are” and “we see” language. I’m still ironing out how I’m filling out the descriptions of the rooms and areas, but I’m sure I’ll nail it down soon. I’m definitely new to this sort of thing, so a bit of “figuring it out” should be expected.

Here is an in-progress photo of my initial hex crawl map, as well as the design of the keep itself (which still hasn’t been fully exposed):

The beginning of the hex crawl map, and the interior floors of a keep

I remember how I would design castles and dungeons on graph paper way, way back in the day and this is bringing those memories back in waves. Whether what I’m working on now will every be used, I can’t say, but it’s been so much fun so far.

I should also add that I have a new resource for building out this world, and that’s Matthew Finch’s Tome of Adventure Design. I replied to a post on dice.camp by Sean Kelley (go and subscribe to Sean’s excellent YouTube channel: How 2 RPG), where he was showing his new hardcover edition of the book. He offered to sell me his first edition softcover, and of course I jumped at the opportunity. I’ve only just begun to dig into the massive trove of content tables, but I’m positive it will become a very handy resource.

I’m still a bit hesitant to share much of what I’ve written as the descriptions of what I’ve been uncovering in Dungeon23. But, I think once I get a better hang of what I’m doing, and my writing style gets a bit more solid, I may share some excerpts here and there.

Now, let’s see what’s happening in the basement of that keep…

Dungeon23 Introduction

~ Bill Turner ~ 1 Comment

In his original post, here’s how Sean McCoy planned on creating his Dungeon23 megadungeon:

A dungeon room a day, every day, for 2023. That’s 365 rooms. I’ll do a level a month, so 12 levels. Every week is a little area of 7 rooms, so I can keep my focus small.

That sounds like a lot of fun, but I think I’d like to try it a bit differently. If you read across Twitter, Mastodon, and Reddit how folks plan on participating, you’ll find ideas like City23, World23, NPC23, and so on.

I think for my own adventure, I want to do somewhat of a combination of all of these. I’d like to start out with an overland trek (building out a region or world) and then at times either “discover” and plan out a dungeon, or maybe I’ll decide to build a city instead. I think if I leave my own rules a little loose, I’ll be more likely to keep up with the challenge.

I’m also not going to be terribly strict about participating every single day for the year. If I can accomplish that, then that’s great. However, if I’m only able to write something down a few days a week, I’ll consider that a success as well. I’m not sure how much of my progress I’ll be posting to this blog, but I will try and write up at least a weekly or monthly update.

General resources

In a short amount of time, a whole bunch of content popped up surrounding the Dungeon 23 idea. It’s honestly a bit overwhelming, but there are a few sites that I do think will be an enormous help. Here are some general ones:

Resources specific to my adventure

In addition to those sites listed above, here’s what I think I’ll be using for my own attempt. This list may get longer as I progress with my playthrough.

Dev Diary Zero

~ Bill Turner ~ Leave a comment

The first question I need to answer is this: do I really know what I’m doing?

The answer so far is: not really! I’m just winging it at this point. But that’s fine.

TTRPGs aren’t completely new to me, as I mentioned in the opening post here, but writing one certainly is. As a teen, I spent many hours drawing castles, dungeons, and monsters for D&D campaigns that were never played, but now, 35 years later, I’m taking a different approach.

Solo RPGs, and journaling RPGs in particular, have truly captured my attention. In a way, they look at lot like simple creative writing exercises. But I feel like there is more to them than that. Take Alone Among the Stars by Takuma Okada, for example. Sure, you’re describing a certain number of physical phenomena you discover on planets. But if you play it right, you can see yourself–or a character nothing like yourself–as they discover and record what they see. It all depends on how to approach the challenge.

Now, for the actual “Dev Diary” part of this post. A couple of coinciding events put me on the path towards writing my own journaling RPG. One was me discovering the actual existence of the solo journaling RPG sub-genre. Second, was reading through Italo Calvino’s novel If on a winter’s night a traveler, and finding within the novel an almost role-playing adventure by the book’s protagonist. Surely these two concepts could be combined somehow, right?

Well, that’s my long-term goal, anyways. I started going back through the book and writing some notes, but then I realized it was going to take more of an effort than I initially realized. Then I remembered another Calvino book, Invisible Cities, that was shorter, simpler, and which could also lend itself to the same journaling RPG format. I decided that was a better place to start.

So, I’ve just recently re-read Invisible Cities, and with my notes, I’m ready to start to put together a much simpler journaling RPG based upon one of my favorite books. I figured it fit right in with the themes of quite a few journaling games. Roll some dice, or draw a card, and then describe what the prompts ask of you. This sounded like a decent first project.

So far, I have many notes and highlights in my copy of Invisible Cities, and some intro text for the RPG ready. Now, I need to start putting it all together into an easily digestible format. I don’t see this initial project being more than two or three pages long, while the one I have in mind for If on a winter’s night a traveler is much more involved and expansive.

My goal is to release the first Invisible Cities-based journaling RPG, and then redirect my focus back to the larger If on a winter’s night a traveler one. If you’d like to be updated when anything comes out, or for any other ramblings of mine, feel free to follow progress at one of these places:

Introduction to the TTRPG Explorations blog

~ Bill Turner ~ 1 Comment

For the last four years or so, I got sucked into tabletop board games to quite a serious degree. Once I found the types of games I liked, I felt determined to own more and more. I bought more games than I needed, and read about even more that I thought I needed. I spent more time on BoardGameGeek.com (BGG) than just about any other website. Heck, I even wrote some Python scripts to built a web site to track good deals on board games, resulting in https://bestboardgamedeals.com/.

But earlier this year, that board game fever started to wear off. The whole hype cycle around the bigger, more complicated, and more expensive games started to lose its luster. I started selling off games from my collection, and backed off on following the constant churn of news about all the games soon to hit the shelves (or Kickstarter). I’ll still play a game when it’s suggested, but I just don’t have the enthusiasm for it I once had.

But somewhere in the midst of all of the board game purchases, I picked up a solo dungeon-delving (and drawing) game called Four Against Darkness (4AD). It’s listed on BGG, but I don’t think it really qualifies as a board game. It’s more of a solo role-playing game than a board game. But it sounded like a lot of fun.

As a teen in the 80s, I played Dungeons & Dragons with friends and I loved it. I bought all of the big books as well as plenty of the adventure modules. But once I got into high school, I stopped playing. Partially it was due to a loss of interest, but I also moved to a new state and school, and I never found a group to play with. Four Against Darkness sort of scratched that same itch I had as a teen. I played a few games with just the base book, and then I started picking up some of the many supplemental books and adventures for the game.

That’s where this interest in TTRPGs started. More recently, I started looking for more games that filled that same sort of niche. I looked again at Dungeons & Dragons–and picked up the base books–but I think it was the solo aspect of 4AD that appealed to me more than anything. That lead me to looking for other solo role-playing games out there. And I found a bunch, including a genre I had never heard of before: solo journaling role-playing games.

That’s sort of where I am at this point. The world of tabletop role-playing games, specifically the solo and solo journaling ones, has really captured my attention. So much so, that not only have I started to seek them out to play, I’ve also begun working on writing my own. But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself on that point.

The primary goal of this blog will be to write about my explorations in the tabletop role-playing game space, both for playing and creating. I’ll be posting some news, playthroughs, and reviews of these kinds of games here. I’ll also be recording my attempts to create and release my own. Let’s see how it goes.