A Month of Dungeons

I haven't followed Year of the Dungeon closely, I've stumbled across it a few times in my blogoramblings. But a recent compilation of Tony Dowler's microdungeons is really something worth looking at.

These dungeons are small and uncomplicated. In the past some of them have seemed more like puns or more lighthearted than is to my taste. But the dungeon above, The Old Crypt, caught my eye.

First, the way each room has a word or two as a description fits the One Page Dungeon philosophy to a T. Only what needs to be said is said: screams here, this is sealed, candles here. That makes sense and I'm sure you have maps that have similar notations to remind yourself.


I think the "Here" and "There" above is a wonderful example of this. I imagine it means the doorway at "There" leads to the isolated room at "Here." But it's such a clean way to note it. How would I have done it? Numbers, letters, matching symbols if I was particularly thoughtful. So these dungeons have this efficient evocativeness about them.

But what led me to write this post was something more. Do you see the word "brittle" in the Old Crypt? Maybe Tony has a clear sense of what that means. Maybe in the terseness of the notes it just doesn't get translated to me, the reader. But whatever caused it I don't know what the hell "brittle" means here, and I love it.

Maybe this is all pretty obvious, but I think it might be a great spur to me as a DM to have that kind of brief abstract note about dungeon chambers to help me generate or improvise. Maybe what that would look like wouldn't be much different than the dungeon dressing tables in the 1e DMG appendix I.

But in those, each table was for a specific subset of descriptors (sounds, container contents, clothes). I'm thinking of more general adjective; "brittle" in my mind could apply to scrolls in the room, to a crust or ice over a pool characters have to walk across, or even to the tension in the air.

How about:

1. bitter
2. strong
3. faint
4. sticks
5. cracks
6. teeth
7. pick
8. bark
9. stalks
10. broad
11. early
12. fair
13. light
14. open
15. crook
16. rasp
17. ripe
18. ill
19. calm
20. weak
    

I tried to pick words with multiple meanings and words that can functions as more than one part of speech. If you get stumped on a particular dungeon room you could roll on this table. If you have any suggestions of good words put them in the comments and we'll compile a bigger list.

Anyway enough of that, go check out Tony's microdungeons. Here's the compilation of a month of them.

The Prophet of the Pot

I'd heard of Diogenes and his search for one honest man with his lamp. I think I even knew about his stoicism and challenge of convention. But somehow until this week I missed that dude lived in a pot!

I stumbled upon a line drawing online that showed this and I thought it would be a perfect NPC for Nidus, my own Striped Mage of sorts. He could offer information and maybe identify things. Only after searching did I realize it was Diogenes and that him living in the "tub" was famous.

Tub is a translation of the Greek pithos which was a big ceramic vessel, often sunk into the ground. Some web pages translate pithos as jug or jar, which makes sense for the smaller versions. But for my American ear pot sounds better for something that big.

Frustratingly, I somehow lost that first line drawing I came across. (If you find a good public domain illustration of Diogenes in his pot let me know) But there are several other illustrations.

There is a famous anecdote of Alexander the Great meeting Diogenes and the latter not being impressed. This doesn't interest me much because it's just the kind of anecdote someone would make up. It does point to the fact that the idea of Diogenes in his pot is archetypal enough in that it was considered for creating this kind of apocryphal tale.

Maybe the hardest part of DMing for me is acting as NPCs without going into cliche. It would probably be a good idea to have some clear guidelines of my Prophet of the Pots values and ideals.


Trouble is, I don't think Diogenes would give a fig about helping adventurers find treasure or identify their material goods-- he lives in a pot! But maybe that's the point-- he's a rich source of info that the players need to learn to tap, find out what matters to him, find out how to interact with him.

And also, my Prophet of the Pot is not Diogenes, maybe he has different ideas about things. Do you have any iconic information giving NPCs in your campaign? Any ideas on how you might run a Prophet of the Pot?

No Origami Dungeons

In thinking about generating dungeons randomly I want a few things from the technique:

1. It needs to randomize & do work for me-- not just be building blocks I move around
   
2. It needs to use common everyday stuff
3. It needs to be simple

These are all really corollaries of the idea that it has to do something and not be such a hassle that I would just be better off designing the dungeon myself. Pretty obvious I guess.

I thought origami might be really interesting because it has 2 and 3 down cold. But as far as I could figure, it falls down on one.

What I did was take a single sheet of paper and folded it various ways. The easiest fold is just to fold the paper in half. If you do that ~6 times you have a nice grid of squares on your paper. Congratulations, I re-invented graph paper, except it was all crinkly.


You could do 45 degree folds to try to get diagonal corridors or passages but it quickly seemed like too much trouble for the effort.

I still like the simplicity of folded paper. I think you could probably make a solo map with flaps that are unfolded to reveal portions of a map, or something like that. But as far as generating dungeons I'm drawing a blank.

So, I give up here. If you've got any ideas for using paper folding to generate maps let us know in the comments.

Next, I'll regale you with adventures in mapping with stencils.

Stencils & Stamps

I like the idea of not just making stuff as gamers and DMs but making our own tools. I have a distant connection to someone who designs stamps for the scrapbooking market. And since I found that out last summer I've had the thought in the back of my mind of dungeon stamps.

It's just been in the back of my mind because it doesn't seem too useful. Maybe a more practical tool would be stencils. Stencils we could print on heavy paper and still share with each other without needing someone to manufacture them. (For a couple hundred bucks you can get a machine that makes stencils, but these are thin craft-style stencils meant for painting not tracing)

The last few days I've been experimenting with dungeon generation using stencils but it isn't working so far.

Anyway, I thought I'd put it to you. In making handrawn maps are there features you wish you could just trace or stamp?

Super Punch Tarot

A tarot deck being created by asking different artists to make one card each. Some cards are cute, some funny, some evocative. I picked three of my favorites but you should check them out.

Above is the Five of Cups by Santiago Caruso.

Ace of Swords by Jacob Green.

Knight of Cups by Timothy Lim.

via Metafilter.