I want to get better at building adventures.
Dungeons are essentially adventures where the shape, flow, and structure is clearer, so August 2021's RPG Blog Carnival topic is "Let's Build A Dungeon", hosted right here.
This is an open invitation to all RPG bloggers, please feel free to join in:
- Write a post taking us through your dungeon building process or
- Write about any good dungeon building advice, methods, resources, or tools you love or
- Write a post taking apart a great published dungeon and explaining what makes it great or
- Grab a cool map and/or some random tables and go where your imagination takes you - just tell us what you did and what you think of the end result - or
- Write a post about any other aspect of RPG dungeon building, map making, or design!
(And of course, "dungeon" can refer to pretty much any point-and-node shaped or location based adventure really)
Drop a comment on this post with a link to your carnival post so we can come and see it. Go see everyone else's too!
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| Need a map for inspiration? Image (cc) constantly-confused |
(Blogger requires you to use HTML in the comment to add a clickable link; don't worry if you can't or don't want to, just post the URL and I'll sort it later)
Early September I'll put up a summary/digest post linking to all your carnival posts, and the Carnival will move on to another blog, so you have the month of August to write and submit an entry. Looking forward to reading them all!
I'm going to have a go too. If I can learn how to build a better dungeon I can extrapolate out to building a better adventure. Or at least that's the plan...
My little contribution for this month talks about how to translate the principals of the classic dungeon crawl to the the hot steamy jungles of Vietnam, or any claustrophobic jungle setting. Enjoy
ReplyDeletehttps://www.dragonskeep.co.uk/post/where-we-re-going-we-don-t-need-walls
LINK
DeleteThanks Tony, it's an interesting spin. Dungeons I guess are point-crawls really, it all just depends on the map?
Absolutely. I design most of my games around the concept of nodal maps so I always think of how each encounter is connected to each other encounter rather than the physical geography.
DeleteAwesome to see other people working on ways to bring the dungeon outdoors. I'm liking the idea of using junglemorphs for random clearings.
DeleteI just finished a series of posts on my blog documenting my full dungeon building process. It wasn't done specifically for the RPG Blog Carnival, but I had a lot of fun over the past few months doing it!
ReplyDeletehttps://lapidaryossuary.blogspot.com/2021/04/dungeon-process-slime-baroness-and-lady.html
LINK
ReplyDeleteThanks Linden - I still need to finish reading through these but this is great! Spark tables are definitely a good idea IMO; I have a much harder time coming up with anything without a prompt and they definitely help to get ideas flowing.
I briefly talk about exploring dungeons, in particular The Vault of the Drow on #RPGaDAY2021 Day 6 Explore
ReplyDeletehttps://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/2021/08/rpgaday2021-day-6-explore.html
Short and sweet! Thanks Timothy
DeleteCampaign Mastery takes a high-level look at integrating dungeon design with campaigns.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.campaignmastery.com/blog/digging-a-hole-dungeon-design/
LINK
ReplyDeleteThanks Mike, interesting reading. The process of designing the location for its original purpose first reminded me of a game that I now need to track down!
You're welcome, Tom :)
DeleteOh. My. Dungeon. This has made my creative juices explode, so I decided to run #DungeonsInAugust on my blog. Four articles running on Thursdays. Here are the first two:
ReplyDeleteDungeons of Eberron: https://codexanathema.com/2021/08/10/mazmorras-de-eberron/
Dungeons of Ravnica: https://codexanathema.com/2021/08/12/mazmorras-de-ravnica/
Coming soon: "Do you want to build a dungeon?" and "It doesn't need to be a dungeon..."
I have recently decided to write more frequently in Spanish, so you may need some help from Google Translate, though.
My experience is that Google Translate seems to do pretty good with Spanish - far better than with some of the other major languages :)
DeleteLINK and LINK
ReplyDeleteThanks Gonz, plenty of history there! Chrome auto translated fine.
From exactly two months ago, so I didn't want to do a repeat. Here's my most recent dungeon process, plus a sample:
ReplyDeletehttps://dreamingdragonslayer.com/2021/06/16/optimum-number-of-rooms-for-a-dungeon/
"RPG blog carnival" is a fantastic idea! I get to read many more folks' ideas!
LINK
ReplyDeleteThanks, excellent reasoning and links to back it up; I'll definitely be using this in future!
The Blog Carnival is great, hope to see you around.
Thanks for hosting the carnival!
ReplyDeleteI've been working on a series theory crafting how to run a traditional dungeon crawl in an outdoor space. The series started earlier this summer, but in my most recent post I took a stab at defining, in essence, what a dungeon room is once you strip away all the game trappings.
https://swordsandcloaks.blogspot.com/2021/08/rule-3-room-is-not-room.html
How did I miss this, sorry! LINK
DeleteDefinite food for thought, and great to see Simon the Sorcerer too!
Last two articles for #DungeonsinAugust are live! Thanks for hosting and providing such an inspiring topic, Tom!
ReplyDelete"Do you want to build a dungeon?"
https://codexanathema.com/2021/08/19/y-si-hacemos-una-mazmorra/
"It doesn't need to be a dungeon..."
https://codexanathema.com/2021/08/26/no-tiene-que-ser-una-mazmorra/
LINK and LINK!
DeleteThanks Gonz, happy to host as (it turns out) I haven't really had much time for blogging in August and it makes me feel like I'm still part of it. Plus everyone loves comments, right :)
My surprising method of building dungeons might surprise you... surprisingly:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.risingphoenixgames.com/blog/is-this-the-best-way-to-build-rpg-dungeons/
ReplyDeleteThanks Rodney, apologies for not checking this out but I will do for the roundup post coming soon! Hoping to be surprised.
Let's try that LINK again
ReplyDelete