So I picked up the journal I had started in March of 2023 back when I first heard of the Dungeon 23 project. Opening it up, I found I had completed a grand total of 8 rooms over about 2 weeks before I stopped picking it up at all. In trying to find a root cause, I feel like I was being too precious with my rooms and worried about all of these big ideas like Jaquaysing routes and foreshadowing larger world mysteries. I was so concerned that it would not come together as the most amazing dungeon ever that it became an emotional chore.
And I’m not even too excited by what I did actually put to paper. I did get pretty excited about one room:
Alarm Bell
Short stairs lead down into the base of a cathedral tower. In the center of this octogonal room is an giant bronze bell, laying on its side in scattered bits of stained glass. Hanging from twine are old bits of armor to form an alarm system. Goblin sentries on duty in the rafters alerted by the noise will make a racket and drop bits of statuary on intruders. The goblins use the toppled bell as storage for gear on their way out to form hunting parties.
So in the almost 2 years since I wrote this I can already see areas for improvement, even without settling on a game system. I’m going to attempt being strict with the concepts of Landmark, Hidden, and Secret information (reference to come). I need to find a way to format that in a way that flows so I can reference it quickly then narrate the room description.
I think tomorrow I’ll post another room and cover the work I did today generating the dungeon’s history with Kevin Crawford’s Worlds Without Number tables.
