“A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.
This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows.”
Dune, Frank Herbert
Another day spent setting the balance. I find the blank page to be my biggest challenge in producing playable content. I know I am not going to be able to open my journal 365 days in a row and have a room come to me. To combat this, I have taken up the arms and armor of a myriad of published resources, checklists, and procedures.
For each Dungeon Region I will use the following:
Dungeon Checklist by Goblin Punch (https://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2016/01/dungeon-checklist.html)
- The classic
Random Dungeon Room Contents from Old School Essentials (https://oldschoolessentials.necroticgnome.com/srd/index.php/Designing_a_Dungeon)
- Took these percentages and applied them to 30 rooms to get a count of how many of each type I should be aiming for per dungeon level/ month. I decided to round up all fractions because I’m nice like that.
3 Step Dungeon from Bastionland (https://www.bastionland.com/2018/10/three-step-dungeons.html)
- To keep in mind that a dungeon is not one note or overloaded.
2-3 Factions (need to find a resource for generating or fleshing these out)
A Wandering Monster Table (format pending)
A Hazard Die Table ala Necropraxis
Rumors or Clues table that point to this dungeon (format pending, could probably find some tables for this)
To help with the background I plan on using:
The History Construction tables from Worlds Without Number (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/348809/worlds-without-number-free-edition)
- I knew I wanted to have Deep History and layers of it to uncover in the dungeon. Even with a couple of concepts and a vague outline, it was a joy rolling on these tables to generate societies rising and falling. Table results generated interesting twists or fleshed out ideas I had ruminating,
Tome of Adventure Design by Matt Finch
- I haven’t gotten to shake the dust off this mass of tables and content, but I’m sure it will come in handy.
Landmark, Hidden, Secret from DIY & Dragons (https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2019/10/landmark-hidden-secret.html)
- More structure for actually turning an idea into a game.
Finally, I know nothing about HTML since the days of Myspace and even less about blogging. So I’ll probably be trying to find some resources for dummies on that.
