A magical source of inspiration

 One thing I'm trying to get better at is developing ideas, rather than simply throwing together a bunch of notes and leave them somewhere "to finish later". While some can be used for later inspiration, I find that some end up becoming mental baggage that feel like they need to be developed to free up the space. So, to free up some physical and mental space, here are some notes that may end up becoming a very loose hex crawl at some point (in the vein of The Evils of Illmire).

Using liches libram awesome oracle I created a setting and took notes. The last day or so I've been working on it, mostly throwing a bunch of ideas onto a page through blitzed brainstorming. My mind kept wanting to go science fantasy in a Caves of Qud style, but I attempted to keep the notes a bit more generic. Is that for the better or worse? I don't know, I reckoned generic makes it easier to adapt and less niche, but who knows.

Where is this place?

 Who lives here?

Who are the faction leaders?

What great beast or danger dwells here?

What legendary loot is there to be found?

So, what is this place?

• Where sandy plains meet forest are numerous ruins of a past empire. Here roam bands of reiving humans and minotaurs who seek glory and plunder in the name of their dragon-god. These reavers also tell tales of a great slumbering fire giant who awakens every few years to eat and fight. Within one of these ruins is a crypt created by imperial mages for esoteric arcane purposes. A wizard, eager to unearth their secrets, stumbled into the crypt and left changed. Now known as the Metal-Mad Mage, he follows some secret agenda, in part advanced by machines of liquid metal. Their presence has awakened an ancient "Aspect of Death" who craves to devour the Metal-Mad Mage's essence.
• If I were to go more science fantasy, they'd be a lot more robots, cybernetics, the works, but I understanding it's a bit more niche and ideally I wanted to create something more people could use.

I had about 19 hexes very briefly written out. Part of why I wrote this out was to refresh myself away from an increasingly jumbled list. A couple of ideas have come to mind, perhaps I'll make a series of blog posts for this hex map. And maybe draw some more cards for inspiration.

Nefolia Caves: sub-level key

While working on the creature and magic item entries for the Nefolia Caves, it struck me that I had not included the 1st draft key for the sub level. This secret area links areas 21 and 25. So I thought I'd throw a post with it quickly. Now to continue on the monsters and items.

Nefolia Caves: map & key

I showed a very draft version of this map some two posts ago. The map redrawn, I thought I'd share something closer to finish rather than the WIPs until now.

It's come a long way since a bunch of boxes in a flowchart and I'm pretty happy with it, as simple and rough around the edges it might be. I'm sharing the current key and map as is, with the idea to make a neater and edited PDF in the future.

Just struck me there's no extended monster or magic item files. I'll compile them and either add them here or in another post.

The dungeon is intended to be used alongside the Caverns of Thracia. My thought was that the place was a smaller village near the palace complex, perhaps a home of workers and others who supported the luxuries of the palace and underground gardens. As such the "Dark One Cultists" are intended to be part of the cultists in the caverns, and statues (which I feel there are a lot of in the Caverns) come up in several areas, either as enemies or decoration.

The dungeon is, and always will be, free to borrow, use, modify, or otherwise throw around the internet.

Map:

(The key is copied from excel and rather crude. A future PDF version will have more effort put into it, apologies if this one is a bit naff.)

Key:

Expanded key:

Dungeon diagnosis - Branches

I returned to my megadungeon for a bit, determined to clean up the starting area I had been working on to work out why I wasn't liking it. I'd flowcharted it before, but I decided to flirt with madness once again and made a cleaner version.

Dotted lines are secret passages, double lines with no arrows are blocked or collapsed corridors.

On a print out version, I'd circled an area and wrote "boring, basically a straight corridor". This is referring to an area where, while there are plenty of doors and rooms, they are only 1 room deep and all lead back to the same path. As I added areas and connections to the flowchart, I discovered this issue was a lot more widespread than I'd initially thought. For all the rooms and connections, there are a lot of branches, dead ends of exploration. Plus there's a lot of squiggly corridors that I feel can be compressed or turned into rooms.

A rethink and a rework is in order. I might even try making a fresh flowchart, making a well looping area then placing my current key over the top of it, rather than try to endless tweak the current one.

1st Draft of the "Starter Dungeon"

 About a week ago I posted a tangle of a map that needed to be edited down. I also set myself a soft deadline of Sunday to get a 1st draft key done. By and large, I stuck to it, and have 95% of a 1st draft (some stat blocks are missing, and a couple of magic items need more than a keyword of detail).

The mess of a map I was working on was also massively cut down. I wanted a small map, but I was sketching more and more rooms which could be a dungeon, but not this dungeon. I wanted something quick and compact to work on, so a lot was cut until I had below.

As the 1st draft was being written, some areas were being cut up into smaller areas or details added. For example, the north-north west cave walls are dotted with small rooms. I was going to take a photo of the notes, but pencil on grey doesn't show well.

As for the key, there are 30 areas keyed, plus a small 14 room sub level not shown on the above map. It's not exactly revolutionary, but its a key. 

There's enough that I'd be comfortable running it. There are 2 main factions vying for control (and a couple of small groups poking around), enough treasure to get a B/X group to level 2, and some magic items and secrets for the curious. Next step, do some editing and some playtesting.

Progress

Last post was about me messing around with my megadungeon. In an attempt to actually finish something rather than be constantly tweaking a huge project for ever, I started work on a smaller dungeon, aiming to finish it preferably by the end of the month (by the end of the week would be nice).

I needed a base. I needed Donjon.

This was my base. I then made a node map or a flowchart mapping out the basic room layout and straightened out corridors.

The day I was working on this, I got to a point where I was thinking "what's the point of this, why am I worrying about boxes and lines and loops.... so many loops." I'd also done ready on various sites about mapping and nodal dungeons and mapping megadungeons. Definitely had a bit of creative overload. So I printed off these nodes and began drawing, away from the computer. 

The reason I drew it out this way was to make sure the dungeon was jacquayed enough. I was realising a lot of my maps were mostly branches, and even when paying attention I kept falling into boring layouts. I think it was because I was too worried about room sizes, getting everything nice on a grid, etc. So I went freeform, added and removed nodes to get something of interest to explorers.

My moments of madness passed, and I had an initial sketch of the dungeon.

It's a mess, but it's a sketch. I currently have a printed version on my desk and many edits have already been made; too many rooms, many rooms need to be shrunk, but the basic shape is there. Like sculpting, a lot needs moving around still. My plan is to have this place as a sort of introduction to the Caverns of Thracia, or at least another place to visit in a route map surrounding the Caverns.