Dev Blog #3 Deeper Designs

 Hey Game Fam, we’re back with week three of our Mega Dungeon Dev Blog. If you’re new here, thank you for stopping by however you got here. If you’re a little confused, that’s ok. Check back to the start of these articles here and you can catch back up. For the quick review, we’re working on filling out more of the dungeon and seeing what else this beehive needs. To see what the dungeon looks like when we start, here’s a link to the map over at Inkarnate, and we’re going to dive right in.  

Room 8:  

# of Room Shape Structures? 2 Room Shape: Oval, Square

Room Size: 6x6, 4x4

Shape Inconsistency: None

Ceiling Height: 25 feet

Room Oddities: 5 (Damaged Structure, Temperature Irregularity (hot), Trophy Room, Gallery, Broken Furniture).

New Doors Out: 3 (One South, One East, One North)

So this is the largest single room we’ve built so far, and it’s a doozy. At one point (prior to the eruption), this was two separate rooms, one was a gallery, the other was a trophy room. These shattered remnants of the furniture that held up works of art and trophy cases litter the room, and the items of value were lost to the elements or taken elsewhere. The structural wall that separated the two (the gallery was the square room, the Trophy room was the Oval) was destroyed by lava flowing through the area at some point. The air in this room is noticeably hotter than other rooms, and anyone spending over twenty minutes in this room is likely to experience heat stroke (as per whatever game system you’re using has for that). It has three doors out of the gallery, one heading back north, one heading south, and one heading further east.  

Those doors lead to corridors that are five feet wide, ten feet long out the north door, ten feet wide, fifteen feet long out of the eastern facing door, and five feet wide, fifteen feet long out of the southern facing door.  

Room 9:  

# of Room Shape Structures? 1 Room Shape: Circle

Room Size: 3 by 3

Shape Inconsistency: None

Ceiling Height: 15 feet

Room Oddities: 2 (Floor Trap, Workshop).

New Doors Out: 1 (One South east-ish)

This room is a workshop devoted to the upkeep and maintenance of both the gardens in area 7 and the wax produced by the bees in area 2. At least a portion of the floor is protected by some kind of trap, which I’m thinking is a snare to catch vermin. The corridor out of the door to the south is fifteen feet long, five feet wide. 

Room 10 (Southern door off of Room 7):

# of Room Shape Structures? 2 Room Shape: Rhomboid, Circle

Room Size: 6x6, 3 x 3, 

Shape Inconsistency: None

Ceiling Height: 15 feet

Room Oddities: 2 (Ceiling Trap, Cooking Fire).

New Doors Out: 1 (One South)

Room 10 is an odd cross between a rhomboid and a circle. It will make sense on the map. The fire in this room is comically oversized, like a giant meat smoking assembly. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been maintained since lava destroyed the place, and now there’s an accumulation of flammable material in the flue over the grilling area that will land on people and possibly set them on fire. Other than that, and determining the residents of the room, it is boring other than the door to the South. That corridor is 2.5 feet wide, and fifteen feet long.  

Room 11:  

# of Room Shape Structures? 1 Room Shape: Decagon

Room Size: 1 x 2

Shape Inconsistency: None

Ceiling Height: 10 feet

Room Oddities: 2 (Benign Magical Effect, Library).

New Doors Out: 1

Room 11 has two key features, a benign magical effect, and a library. These two combined are an interesting set of dungeon wonk. The benign magical effect in this room is that the room itself translates any written language for the reader. The library that is here relates to the founding of this temple complex and the history of the primordial deity it worshipped. Ordinarily these wouldn’t be translatable, but because of the magical effect, the characters can learn all about this place until the volcano. If the characters take the time to read all the books, they can make intelligence checks to remember passwords for magically locked doors elsewhere in the structure. Realistically, this room isn’t big enough for more than one or two characters to hang out in at a time, but it’s immediately next to room 6 which can hold the overflow while some folks study. Further, it has one door out of it, leading deeper into the dungeon. It’s a five foot wide corridor that’s twenty feet long.

Room 12:  

# of Room Shape Structures? 2 Room Shape: Circle, Triangle

Room Size: 5x5, 3x5

Shape Inconsistency: Triangle is 1 and a half times showed size

Ceiling Height: 10 feet

Room Oddities: 6 (Shadowy Lighting, Artificial Lighting, Secret Door, Mildly Dangerous Gas Cloud, Lava, Illusion).

New Doors Out: 1 (One North East)

Okay, this one’s a doozy. There’s a Secret door in this room, and we’ll figure out where it goes to in just a minute. Other than that, we have a potentially lethal environmental encounter. The artificial lighting in this room is in the triangular section of this area, and it feels like this could have been a communal meeting area because it gathered the lights to spotlight specific areas rather than illuminating the entire room. The circular half of the room is a lot more dangerous.

The shadowy lighting combined with the sulfurous gasses coming from the open lava makes it a navigation hazard to get around the room. The Illusory floor makes this much more threatening, as it looks like a solid floor all the way around, but it’s not there in several squares. Taken as a whole, this room can kill an unprepared party, and is probably the most singularly dangerous room in the dungeon (so far). 

The one door out of this room is North east (which is heading to a confluence of corridors) and has a ten foot wide, ten foot long corridor attached to it.

Room 13:  

# of Room Shape Structures? 1 Room Shape: Octagon

Room Size: 8x6

Shape Inconsistency: 1 and a half the normal size

Ceiling Height: 10 feet

Room Oddities: 2 (False Floor, Intelligent Magical Effect).

New Doors Out: 0 (Door Limit Reached)

So this room has a False Floor and an Intelligent Magical Effect. The false floor is in the center of the Octagon and is findable with the normal search mechanisms from your game system. The Intelligent Effect is a magical sage that can identify all plants.  

Room 14:  

# of Room Shape Structures? 1 Room Shape: Pentagon

Room Size: 8x8

Shape Inconsistency: 4 Times listed size

Ceiling Height: 15 feet

Room Oddities: 4 (Pool of Liquid, Poison, Extra Dimensional Space, Torture Device).

New Doors Out: 0 (Door Limit Reached)

This is a bizarrely shaped room with a pool in its center. At one point, that was a pool of freshwater, but over time the venom has rendered it toxic, dripping down off of the stalactites in the ceiling. Curiously, there’s a giant sized torture rack that would hold a giant sized person with their head and face directly underneath said rock formations. This venom has burned through the headrest of the rack at this point and it’s polluted the water below, which has a sickly green tint to it. The venom itself is astonishingly lethal, the poisoned water less so. The interior geometry of the room is off, and while it looks the way it does on the map, it’s actually three times that size in interior dimensions, with a 45 foot high ceiling.  

Recap

13 rooms done

19 doors placed

The dungeon is taking its final shape. I’ve got 6 ish more rooms to build, and then put the door leading down to the next level. This week’s assortment of rooms is an odd bunch, but they add some interesting effects, some lethal encounters (before adding monsters) and tell some more of the story of this place before the Volcano flattened everything.  

I’ll be back next week to finish up the design, and I may get started populating the rooms. I’m about halfway through the six-week article timeline and am roughly where I thought I would be. If you want to catch up, follow the link here. If you want to check out the maps in progress, check here. If you want to pick up your own mega dungeon generator, you can do so here. If you just want to support this kind of project, you can always buy me a kofi here.  

I’ll see you next week Game Fam.