Dungeon23

#Dungeon23 is the viral proposal of Sean McCoy that one could create one dungeon room a day in the year 2023. At the end of the year one will have a 365 room mega-dungeon.

I want to try this out!

My Plan(ner)

Sean has a Hobonichi Weeks planner. It looks like there’s a short paragraph-sized space for each day, and a blank page opposite. The daily entries fit a room, and the blank page fits the map.

I’ve gone with a Brownline Daily planner. It’s got a page per day, as well as an overview at the start of each month. I hope to create something every day. It might not be a room. Might be a treasure an encounter or a trap. Something that covers the page for the day. The monthly overview pages might be used for maps or themes for the month.

I don’t expect it will be playable at the end of the 365 days. Maybe it will take 2024 to edit each entry into something usable.

What kind of Dungeon

What is a dungeon? A site of adventure sure, but what else? What was the purpose of the structure, why was it built? We see tombs, there are the lairs of creatures, towers of wizards. Sometimes the purpose is less clear. Is it truly a dungeon if it isn’t a prison for captives?

The mythic underworld is an appealing concept. Presenting a dungeon as an unnatural space that is hostile to adventurers. No one needs to ask why the labyrinth was built or why it has so many corridors. But I’d like to take structures with a useful purpose and re-cast them as dungeons.

One of the most characteristic features of mega-dungeons is their size. But the largest buildings in the world are not tombs or dungeons. They are factories, hotels, airports, and shopping centres. Can a dungeon have living, useful, purposeful elements alongside the uncanny and dangerous? Can it have places to live, shop, produce, explore, fight, and die? A mega-dungeon can.

Each month or so would feature a type of building, and the rooms for that month would have gameable related to that type of building’s purpose.

For the Blog

In the first year here I tried to make one post a month. In the next, I shall aim for… more than that. At least 12 posts in 2023 is the goal. No less.