I like the idea of megadungeons. In particular, I like the idea of running megadungeons. My biggest problem is they are a bear to prepare as very often their presentation leaves a lot to be desired. Arden Vul is amazing, but those books read like the driest of textbooks making prep work tedious and time consuming. Barrowmaze is better but not by a lot. There has to be a better way.

The ideal would be a megadungeon with a “control panel” design you find with more and more OSR titles. The problem with that is publishing physical copies of the afore mentioned megadungeons in that style would be impractical. The page count would be staggering. I feel like the solution is to write a procedurally generated megadungeon. A depthcrawl in the style of The Gardens of Ynn or The Stygian Library, but persistent per campaign. Even better if it’s modular so I can plug some variety into each campaign I run. The reason I think this could work is the individual components of a depth crawl (e.g. locations, details, and events) are limited in number and easy enough to digest and prepare. The complexity comes in the combination of those three components and how they are interpreted.

I’ve never attempted authoring an adventure of this scale before so I am sure there will be tons of trial and error. This blog is an attempt to shine a light on my progress in an effort to solicit feedback, advice and accountability (which will be graciously accepted, but applied at my discretion).

Project Constraints

  • Uses Cairn Second Edition rules
  • All maps are pointcrawls with a prescribed number and disposition of the points
  • Takes place on a jungle island
  • The core jungle sandbox is the base of every campaign
  • Modules (1 or 2?) create variety from campaign to campaign
  • Random tables should be used to maximize variety at every reasonable opportunity
  • Weeks start on Monday for tracking work
  • A minimum of 5 30+ minute work sessions per week
  • A minimum of 1 blog post per week