If you’re online in TTRPG spaces, you’ve probably seen posts talking about the Dungeon23 challenge, creating a 365 room, 12-level, megadungeon one room a day. It’s a challenge that sounded fun to me, because I am the exact type of person who hears “create another campaign while still running this one” and thinks it’s a fantastic idea.
Which is how I ended up with another notebook with ideas scribbled down for a game idea I hope to run sometime.
I picked a notebook that gets me excited to pick it up and scribble ideas down.
It’s a Hobonichi Techo with art from Earthbound on it. It’s an A6 size, which can pretty much always fit in my briefcase or, in a pinch, in a coat pocket. The cover came with two books, one for January through June and one for July through December. Each day gets its own page with a huge area of grid to work with.
Having a notebook with that matches what I need to draw out maps and room to place descriptions right there next to them gets me excited to get started on this project.
Which leads me to what I actually meant to talk about when I titled this “Dungeon23 Plans”. I’m planning to design a dungeon for Pathfinder Second Edition, it’s what I’m playing most right now, and the tactical combat seems like it would fit nicely gridded rooms.
While I’m using Pathfinder, I plan for the dungeon itself to involve more modern furnishings. I’m basing the building off of Frank Gehry’s Dancing House in Prague.
I grew up in Seattle, and we have what was once called the Experience Music Project, now called the Museum of Pop Culture. That building was designed by Frank Gehry and it has this weird otherworldly look to it. I think that Dancing House is another building with that same sort of vibe going on. It gave me the idea for a commercial office building as a dungeon.
I envision that the CEO of the company running this building has been playing around with some sensitive magic he doesn’t really understand in order to maximize profits. His playing around with the arcane creates a sort of otherworld within the tower.
At this moment, I think the frame story will be that the players are workers who show up for work on a random day but are transformed into Pathfinder characters by the magic that has transformed the building. They’ll have to traverse the building to reach the ritual space in the Penthouse to undo what has happened and return to normal reality.
I’ll be populating the dungeon with mundane work stuff that’s been converted to be magical in small ways. Most monsters will be based on some office tropes twisted to fit the story the ritual is trying to make of the building.
Like I said, I’m excited. And I’d like to plan ahead for some story elements to the dungeon so that I can plant hints and clues to the full picture in early levels and actually play through it with my group as I make it.
This is my plan, but I’m also really excited to see what others are doing with this same challenge.
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