Dungeon Scrawler

All things considered, I'm surprised this one took as long to materialize at it has. The topic began bubbling in my mind when I wrote my room post on Animal Rooms . I will repeat some of what I said there, but I realized I could say more, so get comfortable, because there's a lot more to say. So let's talk about monsters. Here there be monsters Why do dungeons have monsters? Resist the urge to get wistful and metaphorical (what is  a "monster", anyways?), I don't write this blog to lift your mind to new places (for one, based on my actual qualifications that would feel pretentious), I write it to give you practical tools. Simply put, "monsters" are there to: Present a challenge. We're not just walking around a museum, right? Monsters are a source of tension and excitement, and an impetus for problem solving. Explain why the loot hasn't been carried off already. If this was just a dusty basement surely someone would have come through here alre...

Within the last day or so, this blog crossed 25,000 views! Another milestone and source of encouragement. Thank you so much for reading and your comments. It really keeps me going. I started this blog for me; I found myself stuck without a particular kind of resource I wanted to have handy, so I decided to start building that resource. That work continues! And I'm happy that it seems to be resonating with people. Based on the categories of Dungeon Rooms I've worked out, I am expecting to put out about eight more Room posts. You may have noticed that my pace has slowed--that's partly  life  and partly just hitting that part of a project where the initial "honeymoon period" passes and the remainder is simply work. It's harder these days to drum up sufficient inspiration, but I have no intention of quitting!  It's hard to say how much longer the Index will take. A couple of weeks per room type would be a good steady pace, but that's more like a lower-boun...

This is a bit of an idle musing I wanted to put out into the world. In Cairn, magic is generally carried out in three ways. (More like two and a half really.) You've got spellbooks, scrolls (that's the half), and relics. Today's thoughts are all about those spellbooks and scrolls. Mechanical justification vs. diagetic justification For good, very OSR flavored, gamey reasons, spells in Cairn are contained within a single spellbook that occupies a slot. Casting a spell requires some level of safety, holding the spellbook open in both hands, and filling another  slot with Fatigue. That's more than enough for a good time, and we don't have to think about it any harder.  But , my brain is the sort that looks at this and says.... why though? I don't mean "why would you design it this way", the only reason needed for that is "it makes the game fun in the particular way we want it to be", but I do imagine some people with a stronger variant of my par...

Arenas, combat pits, and coliseums. Places where duels, battles, and similar sport take place! Here are the rooms: Let them fight Perhaps it's a bit contrived to set an arena or coliseum in a dungeon. Given how much of classic dungeon crawling entails fighting monsters, what, we stumble into a formal space for fighting monsters ? Especially considering how much classic dungeon crawling entails avoiding  monsters, are we really just going to waltz into an arena and face on down? Well, maybe! But really, I think there are a two main ways to think about an arena in a dungeon: In current use . This arena is a place where a local dungeon faction stages fights for sport. These bouts may be friendly (or at least non-lethal), or may entail setting up captured intruders to duel the factions' local champion. Perhaps the faction keeps a monstrous "pet" and feeds victims to it. Long abandoned and repurposed.  Just like our Great Halls from a previous post, this large open space ...

This will be a little shorter than my usual room contributions (I felt better about it when I was expecting to have this published days ago!); today I'm focusing on stairs, pits, and other descents. Here are the "rooms": (I have no clue what's causing this blur; maybe I need to clean my scanner or something) ...Stairs? I was recently reading through  The Vast in the Dark  because I was intrigued by it's dungeon generators. There is much I could say about it; I was quite impressed with both the content and the presentation! But, the point is that one interesting feature of those dungeon generators is rooms that explicitly connect to deeper levels. As it is a generated dungeon, it seems that those deeper levels more or less "don't exist" until you find a room that connects to those lower levels. The overall conceit assumes that you want to push deeper and deeper into the dungeon to find something in particular (I won't spoil it for those who want t...

Today we're looking at animal rooms: stables, zoos, aviaries, apiaries , hatcheries, and so on. Here are the rooms: Life finds a way Animals are one of those touches that breathe life into a fantasy world. After all, if the only things alive in this world you've imagined are the people , how "living" and "breathing" is this world really? We'll address that  a little more at the end, but for now it's enough to say put some animal rooms in your dungeon. Animals are all around us, and we thinking-beings do a lot to keep and cultivate them. Just think of all the different reasons to keep animals: For labor. Whether to ride them, or to pull a cart or plow. For study. To learn their behaviors, to glean some insight into or from their survival mechanisms or biology. For testing. To test human remedies without risking human lives. For harvesting. Whether it be gathering their fur or milk, or their silk or honey. For companionship. Some people gotta have...