[Gygax 75] 20 FromSoft-y Treasures

I'm doing a worldbuilding challenge. The story so far:

Gygax 75
Week 1 - The Setting
Week 2 - Carving out the Valley
Week 3 - Into the Mines
Week 4 - Hitting a Wall
Week 5 - Divide and Conquer
Week 6 - Closing up the Cadaver
Week 7 - Building Irontown
Week 8 - The final week!!!!!!

Last week of the challenge! Let's have some fun :-)

Week 5 (8) - design the larger world around the starting region. you don't need a detailed map of the whole world, but you should know the other regions that can be reached from the current one (either by overland or magical travel) so that you can start writing rumors to entice your players to travel to them.

I've been doing a lot of mind-mapping, interweaving all the settings and factions. Consider this more of a victory lap than something set in stone.

Far Off Lands

Most of the worthwhile setting stuff is inside the dungeons, under the valley. TBH the rest of the world is still recovering from the last apocalypse, but there's at least three places worth mentioning:

Gnosc. To the north. Dark wizard military. Their artilleromancers have artificially elongated skulls, and long brains to match. The "menhir" shape aligns their neurons, magnifying sorcerous output like a psychic railgun (see: forehead lasers).

1. Trepaning Dart: as dagger, +1. +1d2 psychic damage, save vs mental mutation. For each point of psychic damage dealt, the target gets +5% chance to miscast.
"The tools of dragon hunters long outlasted their empire. These crystal daggers were designed to subvert the dragon's most potent weapon; their minds."

2. Monologue: spell for wizards, copied from long stone tablets. 1d6 radiant damage in a 60ft beam of screaming light, +1d6/turn up to a cap. (Gnomen start at 3d6) For as long as you concentrate, you can spend your turn sustaining the beam, only turning your head up to 90 degrees at a time.
"Throughout history, the shape of power has been singular; a straight line, unbroken. The Gnomen are aware of this, and have learned to shape the mind into a rod of sovereignty."

Nemea. To the east. Merchant-berserker empire. They wear ward-mail, an interlocking pattern of protective runes painted directly on the body. Their wizards often fight in the nude, in close quarters, bare-fisted.

3. Imperial Howdah: sized for an elephant, can be carried as a palanquin. Seats 2. Those seated within are protected from the elements.
"Commissioned by the Carmine Lord on his campaign to the City of Mirrors. The second seat was reserved for his future wife, and is decorated with chains of red brass."

4. Four-Point Nemean Rune: ritual for clerics. 160gp of golden paints in a 10-inch radius runic circle. Everything inside the circle is invulnerable. The paint flakes away after four hours, or after twelve minutes of vigorous combat.
"The Isles of Nemea bleed gold. Nemean warmages do not fear copycats, as no other school boasts the funds to reduplicate their methods." 

Lands of Ashen Rain. To the west. Nascent warlords and their gunmetal.

5. Rustic Handcannon: tool of a stalwart defender. 3d6, 3 rounds/reload, blows up in your face on double damage dice. The spiked handle is designed to be driven into the earth and absorb recoil.
"The oldest of these weapons were forged in starlight, which soothed the fearsome temper of black powder. Today, the tradition is shirked by desperate smiths."

And the countless ruins. Old Paradise. Spagyros. The Moon. Traces of these remain, but the greater halls have vanished into the earth.

To expand on last week's base-building thingy, representatives of the Sorcerer Kingdoms will make contact with the valley as Irontown's prosperity makes it harder to ignore [some sort of town HP related "heat" mechanic]. I envision players bribing scouts to keep their iron trade a secret, at least until they've amassed the man/firepower to withstand a proper army.

I don't have a hexmap for the region outside the valley (yet), but if I did it would have a nearby asshole faction led by a minor warlord who wants to snatch the valley for himself. Like defend-your-town training wheels.

I'm probably overthinking this.

The White Tiger's guns are one defensive option; plutonium is another. The Dungeon provides.

Long Dead Gods

Also here's a few gods. I named four in the last post:

The Lion Sun. God of prosperity, the civilized world, and restrained ferocity, patron to serfs and bankers. "To shade the sun" means to hold back one's emotions. A popular fable details how the Old Sun chose his heir, and what became of the Lion's many siblings. 

The Old King. God of stone, the body, and language, patron to surgeons and miners. The Old King owns everything beneath the surface world; thus, all excavation is barter. His names are Hazog, and Kanek, and Burmanon II, and others.

The Black River. God of understanding, drinking, and death, patron to thieves and poets. If you drop something into a river, you have relinquished it, and anyone who fishes it out is its rightful owner. All rivers can speak; the Black River speaks like an explosion. "Everything ends up downstream."

The Moon. God of traveling at night, the natural world, and secrets. Actually two gods, the Nemesis and the Lover, worshipped as one. Mentioning one to the other is taboo. More than one fable begins with the Moon fooling a creature into calling it by the wrong name, as an excuse to punish them.

Here's some more, all dead, buried, or worshipped secretly.

The Pilgrim Tree and The Beast Tree. Rivalrous sisters cut from the same branch. Both fear the Gray Saint.
Hal'i, The Scaleless Mother. Mother of the second generation of dragons.
The Wyrm. Last metastasized in ancient times.
The Unspeakable Corpus, also called Ur-Lich. Fragments of the Corpus litter the world like scraps of ash.
Leviathan. Ghost-devouring whale, Lord of the Eternal Sea.
The High Warden, also called Belos, Askadion, and Eyoch. King of Hell.
The Line. Yet unbroken.
The Iron God. Worshiped by the depraved: first demons, then the Centipede Lord.
The Frog Pope of Spagyros.
The Dragon At The End Of Time. Foretold. Forewarned.

Long Lost Relics

I wrote 5 item/spell descriptions above. Here's 15 more:

6. Constellant Blade: a blacksnake weapon made of glass and stars. As glaive, +1d6 radiant damage, save vs mutation on 6s.
"The original architects of the Stellar Furnace were a race of noble giants, who could pluck the stars directly from the sky."

7. Flensing Sword: a long, curved sword of bone. +2 vs ghosts.
"Whales once ruled the surface world's seas, but departed. The sailing tradition of paying tolls to the sea continues to this day."

8. Ghost-Rotting Pot: a large urn of debased ghosts; scraps of former scraps. When smashed or imbibed, 2d4+2 cold damage in the splash radius (heals undead).
"The dead must be managed, lest decay set in. Bodies may be burned, but spirits must first be reduced."
("Yes, very good, but how does it taste?")

9. Syncretize: golden city sorcery, encoded in florid poetry. For 1 hour, two creatures understand one another and only one another.
"Thousands gathered amongst the roots of the Capital Tree. Dreams flowed like water beneath its arcing boughs, and the barriers between men eroded until they stood as empire."

10. Dark Sun Knight's Set: blackest plate eclipsing golden trim. +1/piece to save vs gravity. As a complete set, grants resistance to all forms of gravity damage.
"Mad Knight Narn surrendered his humanity to walk with the stars. The Dark Sun knights worship his new form as heretics."

11. Ring of Crawling Cruelties: an iron ring depicting a centipede. Restore 1 HP when you harm someone who trusts you.
"The phoenix centipede bursts into flame at century's end, only to emerge anew from its ashes. Through observation of this cycle, the Carmine Lord learned the secrets of life and death."

12. Chain of the Arena Beast: worn by the morningstar manticore, made of cold iron. You have an edge while riding or being ridden by a creature that despises you.
"Mad Knight Narn is widely credited with taming the sun, shackling it such that it marched across the sky."

13. Clot: blood sorcery, written in rags. 1d6 piercing to yourself and target, ignores iron armor, no Save.
"Ancient sorcerers were confounded by the properties of iron, which their magicks could not affect. The first blood sorceries were developed to subvert those properties."

14. Flagellation: blood sorcery, carved flesh tome. 2d6 piercing to yourself and everything nearby, ignores iron armor, no Save.
"Iron and Hell were alloyed in the earliest ages, when dragons yet ruled. Thus, many blood sorceries originate from demonkind."

15. Plutonium Shard: scavenged by glass giants on the Eternal Sea. Socketed item deals +2d6 necrotic. On crit fail, everyone nearby saves vs mutation.
"When too many spirits occupy the same space, they condense into a dark, howling stone. The ancients witlessly harnessed this haunted stone for its sorcerous potency."

16. Azure Missile: firmament sorcery, taught by the old red sage. Loudly declare the law; the first three creatures to break the law take 1d6 force, no save.
"Once, a philosopher thought the stars might grasp the keys to absolute morality. Thankfully, the law of stars is utterly alien to that of men, and is thus-wise soundly ignored."

17. Corpus Fragment: a scrap of the Unspeakable Corpus. Burn it: on your next roll, 1-16 = crit fail, 17-20 = crit success. Read it: save vs mental mutation.
"A lich's madness, blackened indelibly. The Order of Censures will pay any price to keep these pages apart."

18. Moonjuice: a jug of drug. Drink to surface an alternate personality, or create one if none exists. (A new alter has only as many memories as you wish.)
"The enigmatic Moon is actually two gods worshipped as one. Its highest priests, so often neglected, follow suit."

19. Dragonscale Set: heavy stone plate reinforced with steel. +2 AC/piece. As a complete set, grants immunity to lightning damage.
"When told of the dragon's extinction, the Old King dismayed. 'What,' he cried, 'will we serve to the guests?'"

20. Lens of the Giants: spotless black glass, two yards across, found in the deepest Giant Lookout. 1 HP. Reveals secrets unerringly.
"Having mapped and quartered the skies, astrologers turned their eyes to the earth, and found it rich with prophecies."

And that's the Gygax 75! My purpose fulfilled, I retreat beneath the waves from whence I came.

[Gygax 75] The People Who Live in the Crucible

Mononokehime concept art

I'm doing a worldbuilding challenge. The story so far:

Gygax 75
Week 1 - The Setting
Week 2 - Carving out the Valley
Week 3 - Into the Mines
Week 4 - Hitting a Wall
Week 5 - Divide and Conquer
Week 6 - Closing up the Cadaver
Week 7 - Building Irontown

Irontown is a lakeside fort full of exiles, migrants, and strangers from the far reaches, kept afloat by its ironworks. Iron is outlawed in the Sorcerer Kingdoms, and so those who would refine and distribute it are often coerced by circumstance. For now, Irontown remains safely tucked away from the Sorcerer Kings' notice, shielded by their high valley walls and relative obscurity.

At present, the town is uncharacteristically still. The ironsand on the shore is running out, and the mines in the forest have been taken over by fae folk. More than half the townsfolk have left, having seen the writing on the wall; sixty men and women, with more skill than sense, remain.

[# of townsfolk is roughly equivalent to the town's HP, which stands for... uh... house points? Housed People? More on that later.]

The Forge has been cold for a month. Sometimes, inexplicably, it smokes, and locals hear something heavy moving inside. (A giant centipede lairs within.)

Speaking of the locals, they're decent folks. Despite their situation, they'll offer you free room and board in The Long House, a dirt-and-wood mess hall built around two long fire pits. It is loud around mealtimes, and devoid of privacy.

Irontown's hospitality is easy to abuse, so long as you are polite and non-subversive. Draw arms, however, and The White Tiger will hasten to the scene, much to local chagrin. They gather at the Old Firehouse, gambling and drinking idly, rarely alert. Each clings to their gun as if it were their mother.

In a Tidy Little Shrine at the edge of town, the disparate gods of a migrant population are cloistered together. The trinkets are four: a carved sigil of the Lion Sun; a Black River totem; the Old King's idol; and a mirrored coin, cult symbol of the Moon.

NPCs

The White Tiger is the leader of the eponymous tribe of mercenaries. An up-and-coming, gun-toting warlord from foreign lands, she wants (in increasing order): 1) to make Irontown a worthy seat of power; 2) to claim the valley's iron for herself; 3) independence from the Sorcerer Kings' growing empires. She is ruthless, middle-aged, well-versed in occult metallurgy, and fond of laughing. Her left leg is a prosthetic.

She needs a solid plan to drive back the forest folk. Reinforcements from her home town will arrive in three weeks (she only has half-a-dozen men in town); one week later, they will begin methodically clear-cutting the ancient forest.

The Founders are a council of five ancient men and women, who witnessed the town's oldest contracts with the fae. They are no friends to the forest, but they're suspicious of the foreign woman and her guns. They are led by Grandbaba, who can speak to the trees because she is their elder, or so she claims. She is wall-eyed, alcoholic, pacifistic, and (hypocritically) insistent on proper speech and posture.

Grandbaba needs to speak to a faerie, or to be convinced to trust The White Tiger. For now, she is the highest authority in town, and the locals have good reason to trust her judgement. If the conflict heats up, The White Tiger will attempt to have her poisoned.

Banken is the prince of a mountain sorcerer tribe, cast into exile for his magical ineptitude. He is tall and kind and a bit of a himbo. He will try anything if he thinks it will unlock his sorcerous potential; he's contemplating fishing up the lake-moon-beast, which is rumored to grant wishes.

Mursa is Grandbaba's daughter. She often stares or drools, and looks like a short woman stretched lengthwise to 6'2". She wants someone to help her sneak into the forest, without Grandbaba finding out. The townsfolk whisper she is a kidnapped faerie princess; this is only half-true. (The stretching rack is in the garden, overgrown with veggies.)

Dried fish, rice, and basic supplies (ropes, poles, ladders) are available for purchase in Irontown, but most businesses have moved out of town. HOWEVER, if you invest your hard-fought treasure into the town's growth, you can bring useful merchants back to Irontown. [Even if you don't use XP for GP, investing in the town always rewards XP proportionally.] 

Some merchants to invite:

• Salvage House: Battlefield salvage with most of the dents buffed out. Armor sets are incomplete. Shitty versions can be bought, with a % chance of breaking in combat.
• Ride On Strong: A stable of mud donkeys and red elk, for rent. The former can only bear an unarmored rider at a solemn clip; the latter abhors violence and deception, and will return to the stable if offended.
• Gold Begets Gold: A bank built like a shady tavern. Give your gold to the thing in the back, ignoring its dirty wrappings and unsettling clatter, and it will invest it as it sees fit. This provides passive income, at the expense of furthering the Banker's agenda.
  
• Anything Bazaar: Come sample our wares, travelerrrrrr~! Each visit, the merchants hawk 3 to 5 moderately magical items from their buffalo caravans. Their real wares are rumors, news from far-flung lands, and secrets.
• Dhali's Man Service. Dhali is the old woman on the peacock-feather pillow. She will hire out her husbands to you, as day laborers or dungeon crawlers, at a rate proportional to the perceived risk of injury. They're brave, and handsome, and have diverse aspirations. Dhali forbids you from falling in love with them.
• Saintmaker's Guild. There are many saint-guilds, all devoted to single figures from history. They provide blessings, and sometimes medicine, but will also try to build churches and convert the townsfolk. If you invite multiple saint-guilds to town, they'll hinder each other's efforts.

As the town gets wealthier (more merchants hired, more money spent, more HP), the options for new merchants/services expands to include medieval infrastructural engineers, magic item vendors, alchemists, mentors, a proper tavern (more hirelings), etc.

I haven't figured out a proper system yet, but every 3-ish merchants brings a random "bonus" merchant. Sometimes this is good, sometimes this is bad:

• The Rook. A profitable gambling den run by an ogre of a man. They primarily deal in aerial hawk fights and physical intimidation.
  

Seeya next week.

[Gygax 75] Closing Up The Cadaver

 

pic unrelated

I'm doing a worldbuilding challenge. The story so far:

Gygax 75
Week 1 - The Setting
Week 2 - Carving out the Valley
Week 3 - Into the Mines
Week 4 - Hitting a Wall
Week 5 - Divide and Conquer
Week 6 - Finishing up the dungeon...

This is the last week I'll allow myself on the dungeon proper. The maps are rough and the key is loose, but I'm already 3 days late so [unintelligible scrabbling].

I won't whine much about how hard this challenge has been. I will say it's been a hugely introspective process for me to document the whole process so thoroughly.

Here be dungeon.

[Gygax 75] Divide and Conquer

gungeon map

I'm doing a worldbuilding challenge. The story so far:

Gygax 75
Week 1 - The Setting
Week 2 - Carving out the Valley
Week 3 - Into the Mines
Week 4 - Hitting a Wall
Week 5 - The dungeon, continued... (for real this time)

Let me regale you with a tale of dungeon design gone wrong. You see, I'm a real freak for vertically engaging maps (Dark Souls 1, etc.). So, the first thing I did while designing the 3 dungeon levels was figure out how they all stacked on top of each other.

This was a very bad idea.

Breaking a dungeon down into segments is a really useful tool (whether you're a DM running it or a player navigating it or a designer building it) because it makes it semantically accessible. If the dungeon just flows into itself, suddenly you're building 30 rooms all together instead of 10 at a time, and that sucks major balls.

In my case, I was doing a lot of Jaquaying on the level of the whole dungeon before properly dealing with the individual levels. To center myself, I laid out each level as a closed space first.

Level 1 - Haunted Mine
Themes: Trapped, buried, mine, stone, grudge
Objectives: Retrieve the Scar; secure site A; break the iron circle; drive off the forestfolk; recover the faerie trinket; rescue the starving dogs; appease the ghosts; catch a big cave fish.
Characters: Forestfolk/dogs/faeries, rats, ghosts, carbuncle, fish, surface monster.

This level is the most accessible from the surface, and by surface factions. The hooks come from them: you can help the forestfolk restore the natural environment or the Irontown residents take back the mine. Within the dungeon are a lot of ghosts (dead miners and such) who act as the social obstacles within the crawl.

Level 2 - Infested Caverns
Themes: Toxic, infestation, gas, fire, sick, metal
Objectives: Exterminate kobolds/centipedes; steal the centipede eggs; recover the body of the kobold king; making the dungeon safe for miners.
Characters: Kobolds, centipedes, oozes, kobold king (ghoul), fungi, roots

The vibe here is that of pulling up a floorboard and finding out the underside is infested with termites. Kobolds are great to talk to (goblins always are), and they have treasure in the form of their king, who they keep in a deep hole. This level is mostly full of obstacles to "cleaning out" the dungeon: it has the biggest impact on the wandering monster table, and is the most dangerous.

This was the moment I realized I needed to double back to Arnold's Dungeon Checklist FOR EACH LEVEL.

In retrospect, I could flesh out this level a bit more by giving blood sorcerers some more presence here. A magic puzzle that the kobolds have tunneled around; a victimized adventurer, and their partner nearby; something valuable in the tainted water.

Level 3 - Ruins
Themes: Archaeology, ruins, crucible, artifacts, communication
Objectives: Defeat the golem; assemble Chernobog; steal the big artifacts; rescue/defeat the blood sorcerers.
Characters: Blood sorcerers, golem, demon, ghost dinosaurs, traps, husks

This level is back to basics: a dungeon with traps that's already been traversed by another adventuring party. Some have been reset. Some new ones have been set. Messages have been left. Corpses remain. I imagine there were somewhere between 9 and 4 blood sorcerers in total, and they've all been scattered or routed. There's one last gate they failed to breach, and they released something terrible before they could overcome it.

Radical.

-----

There's a secondary consideration I'm making as I lay out the maps--a rule I'm leaning on because I'm not very good at drawing maps. It's this: All crossroads should be well-informed. When the road forks, it only forks twice, and the options are distinct: one tunnel radiates heat and skittering, another is quiet and subtly stinky.

Fork-in-the-Road Qualifiers: Up/down, sloping/steep, noisy/quiet, warm/cold, dry/wet, stinky, lit up, wide tunnels/tight corridors, worked stone/natural rock.

Oh, and the most important differentiator: messages left by other adventurers. The whole dungeon has been traversed by others multiple times, first the miners, then the blood sorcerers on level 3, and they left notes. (this should be a major theme of level 3)

So, priority #1 in my key is to put a bunch of obvious colored chalk in the first room, and a note on the wall.

-----

Oh, I've also been mapping. Level 1 is the closest to fully realized, level 3 is the furthest. You can probably figure out which is which.

we're getting there, albeit slowly
i should trim the room number a lot

[Gygax 75] Hitting a Wall

I'm doing a worldbuilding challenge. The story so far:

Gygax 75
Week 1 - The Setting
Week 2 - Carving out the Valley
Week 3 - Into the Mines
Week 4 - The dungeon, continued...

Classes have started, so progress has been slow. To lower the hurdles for myself, I'm trying a new technique.

The idea is based in 5 Room Dungeons. Entrance, puzzle, setback, boss fight, reward/twist: these basic components, rearranged and remixed, can form into a basic dungeon very quickly.

In trying to Jaquays the first two levels of Ashroot Mine (working title), I've seen a similar pattern emerging: a loop consisting of entrance, obstacle, alt. route, exit, and reward. In this way, the

that helps split the mine into chunks worth roughly one session

...

Y'know what, I'm busy. I have stuff to show for this week, but it isn't very conducive to a well-manicured blog post. In order to not trick myself into pushing the post deadline forward, I'm just going to keep making progress on my own.

For the time being, enjoy these sketches.

my ghosts are cnidarians for no good reason

some cool wiki imgs I use for reference

[Gygax 75] Into the Mines

I'm doing a worldbuilding challenge. The story so far:

Gygax 75
Week 1 - The Setting
Week 2 - Carving out the Valley
Week 3 - draw your dungeon! in one week! Gary recommends starting with some overview planning to pick themes, monsters, and architectural oddities for each dungeon level, and then setting out to draw and key the first few levels.

DIY&Dragons argues the challenge is best stretched over 8 weeks, with weeks 3-6 devoted to fleshing out and keying the dungeon. I'm inclined to agree.

I started like this: The most important dungeon, i.e. the one most relevant to the story of Irontown, would most likely be a source of iron… a mine… which they got kicked out of by the forest folk… for unearthing… something…?

We're off to the races.

Entrance: Hungry mineshaft, hastily concealed, black drag marks.
Levels: Abandoned Mine, Toxic Caverns, Ancient Dig Site
Inhabitants: Ghost, haunting; Kobolds, digging; Philosopher's slime, seeping; Giant cave carp, lurking; Centipedes, hunting; Crab magician, cowering; Blood sorcerers, delving; Orefish, flickering; Rats, dancing; Language demon, scheming; _____.
Key Features: a crude iron circle, to ward faeries away; pit full of toxic, flammable gas; the half-assembled skeleton of a dragon; the stone tablets thru which she speaks; a magnetic iron spire, surrounded by anti-magic field
Treasures: Dropped faerie trinket; Arms of a dragon hunter; _____

Above is my crude attempt at following Ray Otus' method. I don't think his systematic approach fits 100% with the way I work, but it's been a really helpful set of guardrails for me thus far.

History: Miners from Irontown looking for iron deposits found the Scar. Excavating it and hauling it out 1) broke their treaty with the forest folk and 2) revealed a network of gas-filled tunnels. Mine collapse. Pitched battle. The Scar is lost.
Prehistory: The Loathsome Chernobog, Stormbringer, Lakedrinker, Devourer of Kings and Sheep, lies dying on a muddy shore. Her attempts at healing magics are unmitigably scrambled by the cross spear in her brain. She has hours, at most. Through a violent headache she sees snippets of the future, of her body scattered and preserved deep beneath the earth, of lowborn apes gawking at her bones. Maybe it's the 20 kilos of steel in her frontal lobe talking, but these apes seem like her best chance at survival. With a trembling claw, Chernobog scrawls a note to the future in the river mud, and the vision begins to change.

The kobolds and dragon skeleton are a bald-faced remix of this MapCrow video and this GoblinPunch post (<-- required reading, it's one of my favorites). The kobolds are gathering the bones of the dragon, but they need you to help them decipher her instructions. They also breathe blackdamp (toxic), firedamp (explosive), and stinkdamp (both). This makes fighting kobolds a time trial wherever they're encountered: do it quickly, or the room fills with deadly gas!

Mines are dangerous places! They can be too hot, too wet, too small, or too big. They can collapse. They can be full of toxic gas. They can explode. This dungeon should do all of that.

One corner will be flooded caverns full of acid mining runoff, trailing towards bona fide underground lakes. Another will be scorched hunting grounds of a mated pair of phoenix centipedes (fire-themed monsters can ignite the gas in lower chambers).

I have a precursory map with 3 axes written on it: up-down, hot-cold, wet-dry. I'll use these to flesh out the caverns and hopefully provide some sensory directions for any given fork in the road if I need to run this Theater of the Mind.

My first draft heavily featured a terracotta warrior silo on Level 3, but it never felt quite right. The new layout is a bit subtler, with the transition from caverns to ruins hopefully feeling less jarring. There's still going to be an exit at the bottom that leads to the youngest of the buried cities (that's what the blood sorcerers are here for), but I want the surface layer of dungeons to stand on their own before starting on any megadungeon-y ruins.

My eyes are crossing a bit as I write this, so I'll check myself with Arnold's Dungeon Checklist:

1. Something to Steal - Valuable geodes. A carbuncle? And something more guarded than the cross spear or faerie trinket... oh, oh, oh! Centipede eggs! Everyone loves eggs-as-treasure, right?
2. Something to Kill - Kobolds and centipedes. Blood sorcerers, like a rival adventuring party with cooler magic.
   
3. Something to Kill You - The Philosopher's Slime will be the dangerous-yet-dumb thing on Level 1. The gas caverns are a decent trap. I'm still wracking my brain for something REALLY dangerous on Level 3.
   
4. Different Paths - Hot, cold, wet, dry. You can swim thru the flooded caverns, or sneak thru the centipede grounds. Then there's the standard path thru the fungus farms, and then a claustrophobic crawl-shaft. Boom, 4 paths. I'll probably want some more surface entrances too.
   
5. Someone to Talk To - The hermit crab illusionist will be a sympathetic-yet-greedy merchant, maybe worth rescuing. The language demon is a Beelzebub type; say their name and they'll be able to hitch a ride on your tongue. And of course there's Chernobog, and the kobold/sorcerer factions. Some helpful rats. Somehow it doesn't feel crowded enough, but I'll leave it - surely a little gonzo will sneak in at the end.
   
6. Something to Experiment With - The gas is obviously gameable. The rest of the dungeon teaches the properties of iron-as-antimagic: the iron circle can be weaponized against the faeries, and the Scar can be used to pitch battles against the blood sorcerers. Let's add something weirder though... a brazier with different magical properties based on what kind of light you fill it with? And then there's a room with glowworms nearby... I'll circle back.
   
7. Something the Players Probably Won't Find - I need to flesh this one out. Some of Chernobog's bones, and a couple not-too-magic items referring to the B I G L O R E. Here's where we start dripfeeding the players Soulsborne shit.
   

Last thing I'm missing is a name. Something sinister but not too edgy. Blackroot Mine? Knockwood Mine? I'll work on it.

As for the monster on Level 3, I'm thinking one of these: 

See you next week.

And Then We Feast

dungeon meshi via inktho (pixiv)

My submission to Char2terie (RIP) was a full hack based on Lexi's SAWN-OFF. With seven months' hindsight, the only pieces of the submission I still like are Spell Scaling and Feasting. Here's the latter:

-=~*~=-

Whenever you rest, you have the opportunity to throw a Feast. For each item slot of food or drink spent on the Feast, add its Hit Die to a pool in the middle of the table (“the spread”). Add another d6 for each of the following: pleasant music, new friends, an appropriate toast. Then, roll the spread and split the sum between all PCs as Health.

Before digging in, roll for omens and encounters. If a stranger (or monster) stumbles upon the feast, you must invite them to join peaceably or forfeit the spread. (They’ll most likely accept.)

If the edibility of the food is suspect and you lack the skill to prepare it, Save vs food poisoning.

If the food is magical (i.e. cockatrice omelet), add an appropriate spell (DM’s choice, +1 MD to cast) to your inventory for the day. The spell is in your stomach.

If the Feast is a hit, you can name the recipe. Record the ingredients and spread value. You can’t roll below the spread value of a recipe you’re following. (Ex. Graveyard Gourd [1d6] + Giant Crab Claw [1d8] + Dragon Milk [1d12] = Pump-King Claw Soup, Spread = 10)

1d20 Peasant Food [1d6]

1. Graveyard Gourd

2. Mixed Wild Berries

3. Dubious Mushrooms

4. Wildflower Bouquet

5. Bag of Flour

6. Sacrificial Goat

7. Butter Cube

8. Brandy Barrel

9. Spaghetti Quiver

10. Rock Salt Lick

11. Tortilla Ream

12. Scarecrow Corn

13. Eggs, Goose

14. Throwing Tomatoes

15. Wheel of Cheese

16. Seaweed Wreath

17. Sprig of Herbs

18. Potato Knot

19. Two-Headed Cabbage

20. Milk, Rat

1d20 Regional Delicacies [1d8]

1. Honeycomb

2. Buoy Watermelon

3. Locust-on-Stick

4. Giant Crab Claw

5. Tiger Flank

6. Greatswordfish

7. Desert Peppers

8. Royal Wine

9. Pinch of Omnispice

10. Electric Eel

11. Milk, Bear

12. Rat King Kebab

13. Berserker Mead

14. Eggs, Newt

15. Eggs, Spider

16. Foreign Fruit

17. Ancient Pickles

18. Charcuterie

19. Frying Oil

20. Scorpion Tail

 

1d20 Exotic Eats/Quest Food [1d12]

1. Unicornucopia

2. Gargoyle Steak

3. Psychic Tentacle

4. Pickled Enigma

5. Chimeric Loin

6. Abyssal Roe

7. Eggs, Angel

8. Flame Sac

9. Fresh Winter Strawberries

10. Cockatrice Legs

11. Buffalo Wings

12. Antimeat

13. Golden Apples

14. Silvered Pears

15. Mandrake Leaves

16. Root of all Evil

17. Extinction Boullion

18. Milk, Dragon

19. Whale Bone Marrow

20. Helvetica Oats
    

 

ah, dungeon food

Bonus GLOG classes:

Berserker-Knight. Start with a locked suit of armor, a wax seal stamp, and a book of prayers.
A. You always have 6 Defense, no more, no less. While At Death’s Door, you cannot tell friend from foe.
B. You can wield over-sized weapons. If you do, you act after enemies but deal d12 damage.
C. You’re married to your weapon. You have advantage on all tests involving it. If you lose it, Save vs. heartbreak.
D. Your house extends a pardon, on the condition you defeat an invincible foe.

Orpheme. Start with an instrument, a pair of drachma, and a map to Hell.
A. Someone you love is dead and in Hell. You are invisible to psychopomps.
B. If you cry on someone’s shoulder, they must Save or find you very attractive.
C. Anything that is or was dead is moved to tears by your singing.
D. Your tears can raise the dead, at a cost.

Milksop. Start with a nice shirt, a silver flask, and a telescope.
A: You and your allies Dodge with advantage while running screaming from the enemy.
B: When you push someone into danger, they take half damage from it for a turn.
C: When you play dead, you are indistinguishable from a corpse.
D: You receive the deed to your ancestral manor in grandmother’s will. It’s definitely haunted.

[Gygax 75] Carving out the Valley

Here's what I'm doing. Here's what I did last week. And now:

Week 2 - draw a region map of the wilderness adventuring sites that will surround the dungeon that will form the heart of your campaign.

To ease the decision paralysis, I started with Just Three Hexes. Three became seven, then I expanded them seven-fold. The final result is still probably a little too small, particularly as you get deeper into the forest/higher into the mountains, but I'd rather keep it idea-dense to start with.

An early hexmap key:
00.06 - Some kind of mountain-top observatory
02.01 - The Great Tree, mother deity to the faeries, the estranged offshoot of a much older arboreal intelligence, sort of like a vulcan in charge of toddlers. She makes the faeries out of childrens' souls, which are plentiful in the valley since the tombs at 05.03 opened.
02.04 - Mushroom village: they cut spirits from the river corpses and mulch the bodies. Their wizards know gravity magic; obsessed with ruins at 01.04
02.07 - Hot springs, visited by the monkeys from 03.06
03.06 - Monkeytown oo oo banana
04.03 - Village where the rivers disagree, men dredge corpses out of the swamp and send them downriver in either direction. They're employed by the crabs at 08.04 and wear ghosts on their backs like sea anemones
04.08 - Irradiated lair of the skink. Hunts the monkeys at 03.06
05.00 - Petrified forest in the old riverbed, full of ghost-coral. Something sinister/mournful, related to 06.06 (?)
05.03 - A pile of ancient burial mounds, open tombs, and graves, gradually being carved open by the force of the river
06.06 - Abandoned mining operation, faeries can't cross the circle of iron, fossil-worshipping kobolds
06.07 - The Scar, a massive hunk of iron in the shape of a lightning bolt. They were dragging it back to the forge when the dogs stopped them.
07.02 - Huge cliffside waterfall, home to enormous spectral man-o-war
08.04 - Crab merchant, picking trinkets off of corpses that wash down the river
08.07 - Irontown: the forge is quiet (a giant centipede resides within), and food is running out.
09.02 - Moonrise Keep, tortured refuge of the Half-wolf. A man raised by faeries, cursed by his adopted mother after a terrible argument
10.07 - Hidden camp of spies for the White Tiger, keeping an eye on the valley
11.03 - Ancient battlefield full of ghosts

2d6	Random Encounter Table
2	Radioactive Skink (Dragon) - Stalking; Devouring; Sunning itself
3	Wolf-Bearing Moose - Heavy with a cornucopia of hungry wolf heads
4	Wandering Megalith
5	Bloom of Ghosts - Drifting, Howling, Lurking
6	6d6 Deer - Grazing; Migrating; Fleeing something else (-1d4 to encounter roll)
7	1d6 Recurring Characters - White Tiger Scouts; Blood Sorcerers; Monkeys
8	1d4 Faeries + 2d6 Wild Dogs - Patrolling; Hunting; Grooming
9	1d4-1 Stumbling Irondead - Shambling towards the nearest (unexplored) dungeon
10	Ghost of an Old Hero - Blocks the path: appease or avoid
11	Lead-Lined Knight - From outside the valley, on a quest (?)
12	A Terrible Wizard - Faerie Lord, or Faerie-Eating Lord

The faction structure is pretty explicitly stolen from Mononokehime: the humans need iron, the forestfolk need land. The forestfolk are a big, dysfunctional family of fungusmen, monkeys, erudite wild dogs, crabs, ghost farmers, and faeries. Meanwhile, Irontown resists the influence of the White Tiger, who in turn is preparing to resist the Sorcerer Kings. (I'll try to layer in more external human conflicts in Week 5.)

A lot of stuff in the valley is Japanese folklore with the serial numbers filed off. I'm also choosing to avoid culturally coded words like samurai and tanuki.

Quick breakdown of how the map ended up the way it did: