Players in my games -- Nothing to see here, move along!
In the planning of my upcoming Dreamlands campaign, I'm intending each level of dream to be a wilderness area scattered with many interesting encounters and/or dungeons. The idea being that PCs can choose to dip into any of the dungeons they come across, exploring more deeply in any which take their fancy.
So, what I need is a lot of small dungeons, and a few larger ones. The larger ones I'm quite happy to take from published sources (Fight On!, for instance), and there are plenty of one page dungeons around which I could slot in as well. But of course, I want to create some small dungeons of my own to give the flavour I'm looking for.
With this in mind, I've conceived a new way of writing adventures -- speed dungeons! The concept is to map and fully key a dungeon (or as far as possible) in an hour or less. So, a single sheet of paper, with a quickly drawn map and loads of scrawled notes all over it.
For the interest of other DMs, I present the first fruits of this experiment -- The Caverns of the Silver Men -- a mini-dungeon which I created last night in about 50 minutes.
I'm not sure if it'll be particularly comprehensible to anyone else, or if you'll be able to decipher my hand-writing, but please check it out if you're interested!
Like it! All you need, and enough things to play with... for PCs and DM alike.
ReplyDeleteI would propably go with a little more greek architecture vibe, but that's just me.
Good to hear it's comprehensible!
ReplyDeleteAnd nice idea about the Greek architecture vibe... some columns and such could easily be ad-libbed in there :)
Did you start completely from scratch or did you have an idea of the theme before the 50 minutes began? Either way, it's great stuff. The statues are a hoot, and as for "toilet of silver men / acid piss" ... Pure poetry.
ReplyDeleteI didn't have a theme in mind at all... just an image of a well in a forest with a dungeon under it. I actually find quite often that when I have too many pre-ordained ideas about a dungeon that it's harder to bring it to fruition (procrastination / perfectionism tend to set in), hence this experiment at writing in a quick burst of creativity. Hopefully it wasn't a one-off, and I'll be able to continue with the technique.
DeleteGlad you like it!
I sometimes find that such a quick burst of creation results in better work than many painstaking hours. Not always, but sometimes, and I think you have a sometimes here.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great idea. I have the same procrastination / perfectionism problems when I sit down to work on a dungeon or wilderness zone.
ReplyDelete