dungeon23, L1 A4 R7-10

 Fortress of Decay, West Gate

R7: Storm Drain

No visibility (dark, except by exits). Faint smell of ancient filth.

(o) A large brick pipe at a slight incline. Large enough that people can crawl through.

(?) Pipe is completely dry (unless someone opened a sluice).

(?) One end exits the city by the City Cliff in the Desert, closed by a corroded brass grille.

R8: Qanat Overflow

No visibility (pitch black). Reek of decay, filth, and something musky.

(!) Lair of the sewer crab. The crab likes hide in corners, block drain exits, or ambush from manholes.

(o) A chamber of ancient, mouldering bricks, littered with bone fragments from various creatures.

(?) Overflow from qanats and gutters pours in from a ledge 15 feet above (can crawl through to qanats).

(?) Main sewer leads directly in at ground level.

R9: Sewer

No visibility (pitch black). Reek of ancient filth.

(o) A long, winding tunnel of ancient brick at a slight incline. Hundreds of hand-wide pipes feed into the walls.

(?) 5-foot vertical tunnels lead to stone manholes in the ceiling (stuck) in the West Plaza and Bazaar. There are no ladders.

R10: Merchant's Cool Room

Poor visibility (dark).

(o) Down marble stairs from a ruined house. A room with mosiac floors depicting the phases of the moon; broken furniture; and a square well in the middle.

(?) Well leads down 10 feet the City Qanat.

(??) 1d6 couch legs are made from extinct hardwood, and worth 10 coins each to the right buyer.

dungeon23, L1 A4 R6

 

Fortress of Decay, West Wall

Fruit Garden

(o) A shady courtyard of uneven flagstones, surrounded by collapsing walls. Three gnarled but living trees give perfumed fruit. Leaves float in a small pond filled with rainwater.

(?) Fruit is edible and good, and there is as much as you can carry.

(?) Water is potable.

dungeon23, L1 A4 R5

Fortress of Decay, West Wall

West Plaza Bazaar

Poor visibility (obstructions).

(o). A maze of ruined shops and stalls. Small, furtive creatures clamber beneath.

(??) Searching may reveal a trade item (roll on the treasure table), or 2 on a crit. Add a penalty for each subsequent search.

dungeon23, L1 A4 R1-4

Fortress of Decay, West Wall

 

R1: West Gate. Theme: lair of the apprentice.

(o) A gap in the crumbling cyclopean walls, between the legs of a colossal statue of a beautiful man. Vast metal doors close the gap. There are marble arches on the city side, leading into the back of the statue's legs and up stairs within.

(!)  Lesser ghoul sorcerer and his followers are encamped in the colossus.

(?) Doors are barred from the inside with a huge metal rod.

R2: Colossus Gatehouse

Visibility poor (dim). An evil smell.

(!) Lair of the sorcerer's comitatus, ghoul soldiers with hatchets and crossbows.

(o) A large room inside the body of the colossus, connected by spiral stairs in the legs. An exposed central stair goes to the viewing platform in the head. Arrow slits face forward and back.

(?) Walls are covered with dark stains; floor is littered with refuse.

(??) A pile of hoarded trinkets in one corner -- bits of bone, broken costume jewellery, human hair, plus a single sword in good condition.

R3: The Head

(!) Study of the apprentice sorcerer, armed with an insect talisman.

(o) Inside walls of the head are covered in runic graffiti. It's eyes give a good view of the area outside the gate. Hardwood desk and chair with dark stains, littered with odd trinkets.

(??) Wax tablet with a spell scrawled on it, and a vial of adder venom, on the desk.

R4: Imperial Trunk Road, West

(o) Broad, empty boulevard lined with dead plane trees, from which hang gibbets loaded with sun-bleached skin and bone.

dungeon23, L1 A3 R6-7

 Fortress of Decay, Ring Road

R6: 2nd Water Mouth

(o) White marble fountain, knee-deep and bone dry. A great, open-mouthed stone face looms in the wall, 30 feet above.

(?) Fountain has a covered channel that connects to R7 beneath the street. Humans will need to crawl.

(??) The irrigation channel inside the mouth is closed by a sluice. Breaking or prying it open releases a flood of water and leads to the 2nd Sluice in L4: Forest Garden.

 

R7: City Qanat

(o) Poor visibility (dim, cramped). Labyrinthine crawlspace beneath the streets, connecting R6 with various ruined houses and the storm drain.

(!) Difficult terrain, crawling only. If the 2nd water mouth is opened, this whole area will be flooded.

dungeon23, L1 A3 R3-5

Fortress of Decay, Ring Road

 

R3: Headless Parade

(o) Broad avenue lined with headless, life-size marble statues.

R4: Cactus Park

(o) Ruined park or courtyard, now bursting with a mass of vine-like cacti crowned with crimson flowers.

(!) Impassible and dangerous terrain without somehow cutting a path.

R5: Hollow Streets

(o) Visibility poor (obstructions). A maze of empty building frames and rubble.

(!) Difficult terrain.

My #dungeon23 Method

Goals & Practical Approach

First of all, there's no way I'm writing this thing in a notebook as originally intended. Physical writing is difficult for me, and I want everything in a digital format I can easily rework. I'm not interested in creating this dungeon merely as a writing exercise: I want to use it in my own games at least, and possibly publish it as well. In either case, the work will need to be revised, and I will treat everything I jot down as provisional.

For the same reason, I will be taking a leaf out of Gus L.'s book and doing the actual mapping later. I've learned the hard way that I draw the map first at my peril.

Finally, blogging my progress has the advantage (aside from crass exhibitionism and self-promotion) of forcing me to show my progress, and (hopefully) getting a little feedback now and then.

 

Aesthetic Approach

Among dungeon writers, I'm in an odd situation, in that I actually like a lot of traditional dungeon tropes and aesthetics, but only when they feel 'alive' and are presented in an interesting way. While I admire the creativity of a lot that came out of the former 'OSR', the really gonzo stuff tends to leave me cold (and has probably become its own kind of stale genre, at this point).

On the other hand, I rediscovered 'boomer shooters' over the pandemic, particularly Quake. For purely contingent historical reasons, Quake marries fantasy and science fiction elements in a way I find oddly coherent and compelling. I've also always wanted to do a sort of 'doom dungeon crawler', but I'm not completely committed to the idea right now, so making a sort of 'hellish techno-magical' dungeon would let me keep the broader setting assumptions usefully vague.

It would also let me draw on an interesting well of influences -- Book of the New Sun, Dune, Dark Sun, the short stories of Clarke Ashton Smith -- without completely abandoning traditional delving environments.

The actual physical layout I've settled on is an abandoned city in a desert wasteland (the first 'level'). The city is composed of multiple walled 'tiers',  with the outermost 'level' being the city proper, and each rising inner tier a unique (and progressively more difficult) environment. There will also be a couple of underground levels that function as sublevels or alternate paths.

Technical Approach

Dungeon design is also game design, at least implicitly. A massive crawl implies game design elements that are worth examining. For example: how often are resources like food and water encountered, if at all? How far is a party expected to progress before it should turn back?

If the idea is that characters are progressing through a massive complex while expending resources, then the rhythm of the game's 'exploration economy' may need to be incorporated into the dungeon. I suspect this means that a good dungeon can never be truly system-agnostic. The actual system I settle on will probably be my own, with an eye toward compatibility with something like Knave or Basic-type retroclone like OSE.

Finally, I want to make the relevance of information in the keyed entries immediately obvious. I will probably tinker a bit more before I find a method I'm completely satisfied with, but I want to use symbols to denote different types of information, viz.

👁 or (o) General description.

⚠ or (!) Hazards or other important information.

✋ or (?) Additional detail, evident upon examination or interaction.

🔍 or (??) Obscure information; generally requires a successful search.

dungeon23, L1 A3 R1-3

Back to doing the #dungeon23 thing after a brief hiatus due to travel. Now that I'm able to maintain a routine, I'll be back to doing one of these every day. To keep things neat, I'm contemplating just writing the rooms offline and making a post of the week's progress at the end of each week, but that does seem like duplicated effort. I'm open to suggestions!

Rather than wreck myself trying to catch up all at once, I'm going to do a minimum of one room each day and fill in the extras as the mood takes me, viz.:

 

Fortress of Decay, Ring Road

Themes: ghoul lair

R1: Midden

(o) An indescribable smell. A wound in the earth, 30 foot across at the mouth and 90 down to its gloomy end. The lip, bottom and sides are heaped with sun-dried bodies, bones, broken paving stones, and rubbish.

(?) Can be climbed, with danger of falls, snagging, or an avalanche of rocks and bodies.

(?) Leads down to demon lair in L2: Necropolis.

(??) The gleam of a golden helmet, halfway down the midden.

R2: Watch Tower

(o) A stone tower in the shape of colossal entwined bodies. Great bronze doors below; a ring of gaping almost-human mouths above.

(!) Lair of a group of ghoul soldiers with hatchets and crossbows, eager for prey. What they don't eat, they throw in the midden.

(?) Door is barred on the inside.

(?) Mouths are firing ports and lookouts. Give a good view of the city.

(??) Ghoul leader wears a necklace of looted rings worth 100 coins.

R3: 1st Water Mouth

(o) White marble pond with dregs with algal water. A great, open-mouthed stone face looms in the wall, 30 feet above.

(?) A tiny trickle of water stains the wall, running down from the lips of the mouth.

(!) Algal water is sickening to drink.

(??) The irrigation channel inside the mouth is closed by a sluice. Breaking or prying it open releases a flood of water and leads to the 1st Sluice in L4: Forest Garden.

Dungeon, L1 A2 R6-7

Temple Arcade

Room 6: Secret Fane

(o) Stone desk scattered with ruined scrolls and implements.

(??) 1d4 wax-sealed scroll cases with arcane documents.

Room 7: Belfry Sanctuary

(!) Lair of the Shrikemother. Bears the Blinding Spear. 1-2 = away; 3-4 = asleep; 5-6 = awake.

(o) Terrace garden, overgrown and strewn with layers and layers of bones. A bell hangs at the far end, with a chain reaching near to the ground.

(?) Ringing the bell summons 3d6 shrike demons.

Dungeon, L1 A2 R4-5

Temple Arcade

Room 4: Hall of Vestments

Poor visibility (dim light, many obstructions), musty smell

(o) A maze of hanging gowns, once white, now browning and moth-eaten.

(!) Save vs. becoming lost when exploring the closets. Open flames invite fires & suffocation.

(??) A princely robe of white silk and brocade, worth 100 coins.

Room 5: Barracks

Poor visibility (dim light), musty smell

(!) Lair of a death knight and 2d6 ghoul soldiers, aligned to the Purifying Flame.

(o) A cold barracks with stone beds and tables.

Dungeon L1 A2 R1-3

 Area 2: Temple Arcade

Themes: shrike mother lair, undead cult of purity

Room 1: Hall of Echoes, Lower Story

(o) Glittering marble hall, silent except for your own footsteps. Portals and alcoves line the sides; vast  brass doors seal the ends. Upper story balcony looks over the hall, 30 feet below. Lit by high windows.

(?) End doors (to East Plaza & West Plaza) are stuck & trapped. Brass grilles beneath the main doors, held in place by heavy screws. Doors are mounted on metal axles either side of the grille.

(??) Clay pots in trenches beneath the grilles, one against either axle.

(!) Pots are crushes by flanges attached to the door, releasing poison gas.

Room 2: Stairwell

(!) Undead knight, silent and still, guards the stair against outsiders.

(o) Spiral marble staircase . Up to Mezzanine, down to Level 2: Necropolis.

Room 3: Mezzanine

(o) Long upper story. Stair at end (to Belfry).

(?) Alcoves, most with marble statues to virginal deities.

(??) One alcove is missing a statuette. Wall behind rotates on a central axis if shoved, leading to Secret Fane.

Dungeon, L1 A1 R7

 Room 7: Refuse Pile

Smell: rotten flesh and bone bleached in the sun

(o) Scattered bones, potsherds, tiles, and ruined trinkets heaped in a great mound.

(??) 1d6 of 12 silver bangles worth 10 coins each.

Dungeon, L1 A1 R6

 Room 6: East Plaza

(o) Broad plaza with four titanic marble statues of inhuman beauty, locked in dance or struggle around a  pond of fetid water. Fleshy eggs hang from slowly dripping wounds carved into the statues, feeding the pool.

(!) Shrike demon eggs in the statues.

(!) Water is unclean; save vs. disease if drunk.

(?) Plaza is strewn with broken roof tiles and fragments of bone.

(?) Vast, arching portal to the Echoing Arcade.

(??) Obscured by debris, a stuck brass trapdoor to the Cistern.

Dungeon, L1 A1 R5

 Room 5: Imperial Trunk Road, East

(o) Makeshift wall of bone and stone fragments, crowned with skulls, blocks the broad road.

(!) Skulls are loose and trapped. If disturbed:

1. Skull contains bells. Raise alarm.
2. Skull contains firebomb.

Dungeon, L1 A1 R4

 Room 4: Eastgate Streets

(o) Streets of slate and ochre brick, shattered tiles, imploded homes and collapsing peristyles.

(?) Sporadic shelter under verandahs and within buildings A-C.

(??) Random bauble treasure.

(!) Rooftops and collapsed buildings are difficult terrain. Crossing invites a ruin event.

Dungeon, L1 A1 R3

Room 3: The Head

Visibility poor; putrid smell.

(0) Half-filled with fleshy shrike demon eggs. Crushed human bones litter the floor.

(!) Disturbing eggs causes hatching and raises alarm.

(?) One eye socket is empty, with egg sacs spilling out. The other has a weapons-grade focussing lense worth 100 coins.

#dungeon23 L1 A1 R2

Room 2: Colossus Gatehouse

Visibility poor; putrid smell.

👁 A large room inside the body of the colossus, connected by spiral stairs in the legs. An exposed central stair goes to the viewing platform in the head.

⚠ Clusters of fleshy eggs blot the arrow slits on both sides of the torso. If disturbed, they burst, releasing the young shrike demons within.

🔍 The furnishings are mostly long gone, but there is a metal cabinet with stuck doors on one wall. It holds dangerous alchemical reagents. Stuck metal doors on either side lead to the top of the walls.

#dungeon23 L1 A1 R1

 My first 'dungeon23' post. I'll write a bit more about the challenge, my approach to it, and my thoughts about it later. For now, let's get the daily room posting started.

Level 1: Fortress of Decay. Theme: sun-hating ghoul army, labyrinthine ruins.

Area 1: East Wall. Theme: shrike demon infestation.

Room 1: East Gate.

👁 A gap in the crumbling cyclopean walls, between the legs of a colossal statue of a beautiful man, now scabbed with strange growths from belly and eyes. Vast metal doors lie open. There are marble arches on the city side, leading into the back of the statue's legs and up stairs within.

🖑 Doors are corroded and stuck open.

🔍 Growths on the statue are giant fleshy egg clusters.

⚠ Disturbing them causes the shrike demons to hatch.