Dungeon23 (Wk 15/16) Random encounters and random cards for dungeons

Week 15 was a bit of a wash, with a family medical event and then GaryCon that weekend. Fortunately, I had mapped/keyed far enough ahead that I didn’t fall behind. 

Wandering Monsters/Random Encounters

This week, I completed keying Level 5 and mapped/keyed a sublevel. Level 5 had a definite theme, as versus more of the gonzo craziness of Levels 1-4. I like how it came together. 

With my wandering monster chart for Level 5, I focused on events/activities that the monsters might be engaged in. For example – the monsters of one room are wanting to hunt/kill the monsters in a different room across the level. So, one of the events that may be engaged by a random encounter is that they attack! It might happen when the players are nearby, or it might not, but I’ll have to resolve the situation either way! I’m curious to see how this plays out.

Sublevel design

This one was a doozy to key, it’s definitely a high-risk, high-reward type of location, with some definite TPK possibilities, but also some vast riches to be had. Do you dare tread the stairs?

I raised the bar in terms of what “level” to key the sublevel at, to increase the danger/reward.. There’s also a special trick that changes the nature of the level, depending on what the players do! Unfortunately I can’t post spoilers, but this trick required me to practically key two separate versions of the same sublevel!

A huge influence with the design of this sublevel comes from a fun area in Diablo 2. 

Dungeon Architect Cards and random dungeon generation

Up till now, I’ve been generating the dungeon’s layout using Appendix A from the 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide. For this sublevel, I wanted to try out a different approach, and thanks to a random discovery on my RPG bookcase, I had that!

The Dungeon Architect Cards are courtesy of a Kickstarter by Simian Circle Games that I participated in 2016. I received both the World Architect Cards and the Dungeon Architect Cards. 

I don’t know much about Bloat Games, but they have a product line called “Dark Places & Demogorgons”, made for the popular retro-clone OSE, as well as they’ve been helping Simian Games release something called Perilous Adventures – apparently a riff on 8bit gaming.