#Dungeon23 — Tunnels Beneath the Earth (Day 1)

Below is the first day's work for my Dungeon23 project: Tunnels Beneath the Earth. I don't intend to post every day, but I wanted to get the initial progress posted. Day 1 consists of an unscaled map of the surface ruins and seven numerically keyed locations (which will be my daily pieces). The first piece is the city ruins, which is mostly an open area for the party to encounter wandering monsters on their way to one of the many entrances to the dungeon proper. I cheated a little and added six alphabetically-keyed locations to define the important areas of the main site. 

The remaining six numeric locations comprise the first weekly section (one-quarter of the 1st level). The other three sections for January will detail several areas just below the surface, each accessed via one of the keyed locations in section 1. All together, these four sections will comprise level 1, titled: The Upper Works. The numbered locations are...

1. The Ruined City
2. The Pile
3. The Culvert
4. The Necropolis
5. The Colossal Head
6. The Quarry
7. The Metal Cave
   

My numbering scheme is based on level/section/room (area), so The Ruined City is keyed at 1.1.1, The Pile is 1.1.2, The Culvert is 1.1.3, etc. Other that that, I don't exactly have a strategy for how I will format the sections (which I think is kind of the point...to not have one), but my initial thought was to have a section map on the left page, with the key on the right page. 

I knew the initial descriptions for the ruins were a little beefy, since this is a lot of establishing material, but it's pretty clear I won't get all seven surface locations on these two pages. I'm not too worried about that...I believe I can accomplish that for later levels, but I definitely need to work on my editing and keep the dungeon room descriptions as brief as possible.

It's also been challenging not to think too far ahead. The organizer in me wants to get everything mapped out and tidied up, but I think that's where a lot of my projects fail to launch. I'm trying to keep this process organic and free-form, without a lot of preconceived ideas about where it will all go. That said, I laid down quite a few threads for future dungeon development in the first set of keyed areas.

I feel good about the start of this project, so far. I'm even lining up a group to start playtesting it in a few months once I get a couple of levels complete. I will likely post the first completed section this coming weekend, but I may have another post or two about the process if I have any interesting insights.