Dev Journal 13.10.2021 - Start

First entry, hooray. Concept is down and I’m 56 rooms outlined into the thing, so I’m going to have to backtrack to explain my reasoning for making this damn thing.

From the Top:

Why? – I love the idea of megadungeons and have always wanted to make one. Running them seemed difficult and some of the older ones are a little to archaic or unwieldy for my taste to use at the tables I play (Barrowmaze and Curse of Strahd spring to mind). That being said, I am still enamored with the idea of a singular location, filled to the brim with danger and variety, serving as a wholly formed place for a campaign or series of game sessions. Rather than building a wide-open world that stretches from corner to corner and whose grand scale glosses over the every-day struggles and idiosyncrasies of common folk, a megadungeon has the opportunity to build a “deep” world; a world whose scale is contained and explored in detail.

Inspiration – The setting of Arx Fatalis serves as the “bones” of this thing. While I’ve unfortunately never had the chance to play it, the concept and mood of a medieval city buried beneath the earth, struggling to survive an apocalypse outside tied into some personal anxieties I’ve been nursing for some time and wanted to explore through the medium of role-playing games.

To lead off of that, the real “meat” of the mega-dungeon pulled off of the very real current event of the hyper-rich preparing for some unspecified doomsday scenario. In the midst of climate crisis and a pandemic it’s pretty clear to see that those with means and power will absolutely leave the rest of us screaming in the dirt, all while stomping down to ensure their own safety and protection. Fuck them, and pretty early on I decided this mega-dungeon would stand as a condemnation of that mindset.

On a less incendiary note, I want the dungeon to be less of a bloody smash-and-grab and more a contemplative journey through the ruins of something with deep history, now fallen into decay. The adventurers are strangers here, unaware of the purpose and history, stuck gawking and wondering at the purpose of this ancient realm. It is the journey of a cautious archaeologist, rediscovering a lost architectural and cultural wonder, rich with its own tragic history and untouched by modern times. All that is known of the dungeon is buried in rumor and myth, its true history and purpose overwritten and forgotten with time and shifted belief.

Catch-up

I’m starting this dev journal a week into the creative process, so let me explain in short order what I’ve done so far and how I did it to the best of my knowledge.

Conceptualization – The first genuine “writing” for the dungeon was in my “idea journal” sometime in September 2021. My idea journal is a place I record some of my more spur-of-the-moment or manic ideas and concepts for design so I don’t lose them after I forget and move on to some other project. I did a quick write-up and put the idea journal back in its spot for later use.

Start – My next book was delayed until June of 2022, something I am still bitter about and put me into an anxious mood. I hadn’t released anything since February and needed to publish something by the end of the year to cover bills for next year (yay freelancing and independent publishing). I pulled out the entry from the idea journal and got to work.

Dungeon Layout – I treat most of my projects, be it painting or writing, in the same manner: start with the broad-strokes and refine bit by bit. I outlined the layout of the dungeon and it’s specific areas based on what a city-sized medieval-era doomsday bunker would require. One level would serve as the recreational and commercial area, the next a massive agricultural and production site, followed by a residential level filled with living quarters, and finally a bottom with an area for expansion and maintenance of the internal machinery. Once I knew what the areas were, I played around with the arrangement, placing areas as the architects might to strategically keep the most “valuable” assets (themselves) protected while ensuring the working class and common folk were as close to their labor as possible.

History – After I figured out what the place looked like, I quickly hashed together a timeline of events for the bunker-city. Since I wanted the place to have history and bear the scars of its failings and upsets, I needed to actually GIVE the place a history. I wrote it out while hanging out in my partner’s bed one evening.

Broad-strokes first.