Wednesday, December 28, 2022

So this Dungeon23 thing is really taking off, eh?

Seems like I can't go five minutes on the nerdweb without seeing another reference to the yearlong megadungeon effort widely known as Dungeon23.  Which is awesome!  In case you haven't seen it, it appears to have been launched by a tweet from Sean McCoy of Mothership fame, who started a movement with these words:

Megadungeon for 2023. 12 levels. 365 rooms. One room a day. Keep it all in a journal.

There's a whole post about it over on his Substack site.  (Is that just called a Substack?)  And people are freaking out about it.  In a good way.  There's a subreddit and a ton of mentions on Twitter and a lot of people happy about being creative and helping each other be creative.  I mean, when I see an RPG project get mentioned on Gizmodo, Grognardia, and The Other Side, I should probably pay attention, right?

My initial thought was something along the lines of, "well, there's another longterm hobby goal for me to slack on...I should probably steer clear."  But now that I'm seeing so many folks getting excited about prepping for it...might just be FOMO, but I'm kind of thinking I should give it a shot...!

Maybe I actually craft a "traditional" megadungeon to get the archetypal experience?

Maybe I use 5E rules and try to pare them down to my own take on OSR-inspired modern D&D?

Maybe I put together a neighborhood for Ravnica?

Maybe I stretch the megadungeon idea a little further and instead make that a neighborhood for Light City or Dogwood City?

Maybe the megadungeon is actually a human body, and I finally follow through on gaming in micro?


Or, maybe I just dream big for a little while and ultimately realize that it's time better spent on a project that I'm feeling a little more...like, at the moment, rules for playing with some of my action figures.

I never finish those either, though.


So, those who stumble through my little corner of the blogosphere...anyone thinking about taking this on?

6 comments:

  1. I'm kind of tempted, but not really in a "dungeoncrawl" headspace at the moment, so will probably just follow the work of others (just for a change!).

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    1. I know what you mean...and know myself well enough to know that any dungeoncrawl headspace I'm in probably won't last the month of January...but man, it's tempting! And I keep thinking things like, "fantasy Death Star - I could do that...!"

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  2. I'm just now seeing all the Dungeon23 stuff and I too am intrigued. I love your alternatives. It would be awesome to see a Ravnica neighborhood or Light City. I think I'm going to participate, just not sure how yet.

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    1. I'll keep an eye out for your thoughts...it really is so tempting, and I don't know why I'm so thrown by the inevitable sense of failure that will come when I get bored with my topic after a month and a half...! ;)

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  3. I think I'm going to do something for it, but a dungeon room per day feels like a wonky format -- either you're doing 365 "interesting" rooms, which seems like it would be overwhelming in play, or you're doing "empty" rooms on some of the days, which feels a bit like a cheat -- so I'll probably do something a little different, but still in the spirit of the challenge.

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    1. Yeah, it's definitely hard to imagine exactly how the room-a-day thing is going to play out over 12 months. I'm thinking the interesting-vs.-empty tension will end up being in play just based upon how much time is available on a daily basis, and it's interesting to think about the details of a dungeon being shaped so closely by how busy one's life is. Although...I guess that kind of happens anyway...?

      I'm very interested in seeing what you settle on!

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