What we're gonna do right here is go back, way back, back into time. When the only people that existed were troglodytes...cave men...Cave women...Neanderthal...troglodytes. It's the first day of 2023 - hopeful hacks by the bucket lace up for their personal 365 days of megadungeon manufacture/drudgery.
Ginny Reddington Dawes, writer of the "Coke Is It!" jingle, has just died. (and dig the sweet LLM writing about it - the author's "passion for the subject and dedication to research [made him] a respected storyteller in the genre" - sprichst du roboter? ...according to the WHOIS, said linked website also launched 1/1/23)
Indeed, overnight almost GrAI goo commenced to swallow the land.
I, being a dilettante, started and failed many times to maintain the requisite schedule of D365. But, being a carrier of paper and pencil, returned from the driven well with fieldnotes.
Here's how it should have worked. I see your megadungeon and raise you 11, albeit sad little things of 30-odd rooms apiece, eschewing the map that's halfway the most interesting part of the project for a depth-crawl's sinuous blur. At every level down you roll an additional d6, resulting in a satisfying handful if you get down to level 5. Or, heck, stack the boats one on top of another and you've got 60 dice in a cup. Big counting.
Every month with the constancy of plastic gears a ship passes petite Yscyra. A ship ripe for the looting. Your team can decamp into its bowels, but beware! The object moves with the seasons. Week 1 yon ship is approaches, Week 2 and 3 passes, Week 4 departs. Once it's gone, you're gone with it, and the overland journey after you finally disembark, be it on the Lawfulgood side or the Chaoticgood side, is murder.
(good being a euphemism for "please don't slice and dice me). If you only play once-a-month, you better time-budget real world for a daring escape.
The basic boxboat is thus constructed:
0 - EMBARKATION POINT: 1
1 - The UPPERDECK: 1d6+1
2 - The LOWERDECK: 2d6+1
3 - The COFFERDAM: 3d6+1
4 - The BILGE: 4d6+1
5 - The ORLOP: 5d6+1
There's also:
STAIRS - Always going down until Level 5, where further down is the water. You want stairs going up? Find the stairs you used last time.
TERMINALS - Ostensibly why you, my dear JACKALWERE, are here. If the team can hold the door, a dogboy can extract from the Lupine Geometries items wonderous and fair.
TRAPS - Obligatory.
The SUPERSTRING OGRE - If you roll the same result as where you already were (say a pair of sequential 13s), another boats begin to leak into this one. The room is in your current boxboat but is also in the other one. Alternately, any room of this number anywhere could be used. My double 13s here gets me Patrick Wetmore's ASE Level One (Dungeon Highway) "Storage Closet" with rusty bucket and brittle broom. Outside, you can hear "screechmen" on the hunt. They will be just as suprised as you if you let them through.
PATULTIUS. The boat is clearly upside down, it's keel in the air like a dead goldfish. Level 1 is thus played out on a curved surface - very unstable.
aka Pinheads aka Gauchos
aka Gembugs aka Treasure Type L-thropods
 |
| C. M. Kosemen |
aka Howlers aka Snarling Jarlings
 |
| Melvyn Grant (via 70s Sci Fi Art) |
aka Dormammu aka Candle Romans
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