The Hurricane Dungeon – The Curséd Caverns (Level 8)

Continuing down into the depths of the Hurricane Dungeon, Level 8's map was drawn on the fifth night without power. Like the previous cavern map for Level 7, there are only 21 encounter areas here, so about half the number as the "finished" levels.

I like underground rivers, so this map has a big one winding right through, with many side caves and tunnels filling out the level. A pair of waterfalls, various ledges, and a series of rapids provide some nice natural obstacles as well. There are no ways off the level other than the river channel, so I needed to add a few; specifically, the three tunnel connections from Level 8.

As for connecting this level down to Level 9, one major thing complicated the situation: Level 9 is not directly below Level 8. Rather, it is down one level but shifted completely to the right. On that map, the river channel enters the level in the top-left corner, directly connecting to the river outlet on this map. This means that the likeliest routes down to Level 9 would be in the upper-right portion of the Level 8 map.

I also rolled one "Stairs" results on the dungeon stocking rolls, so I added a single tunnel down to Level 9. This provides for only two routes off the level (including the river channel) which results in a bit of a bottleneck to further progress. The party will have to either master the river channel somehow, or locate the cave with the statue where the new tunnel leads down. Usually, you don't want bottlenecks like this in your dungeon, but it's not so bad in this case.

That's because the layout of this level makes it clear that the dungeon "rooms" lie along the river's descending path, so it should seem logical to the players to investigate the downstream area where the river leaves the map. If they do, they will find that the river dumps via waterfall into a huge cavernous reservoir overlooked by a ziggurat temple carved into the wall. At the top of the falls, another cave entrance leads into other areas of Level 9. How they reach this area is up to the players and their resources, but it will at least be obvious that more dungeon lies in this direction. Even if they can't manage to get further downstream here, the knowledge of this area should motivate them to search the E side of the level for another route in this direction, in which case they will quickly find the new tunnel in the cave with the statue.

For some reason, I labeled many of the natural features by writing on the original map, which I didn't do on the others. I took the opportunity to remove the extra words and clean up a few things while adding river fords in two obvious spots. One of the "Trick/Traps" I rolled was a collapsing bridge, so I drew a span over the river. I also drew a connecting tunnel between two previously-isolated caves to give the level a little more flow. After adding a key and shading, the map turned out like this:

My content stocking rolls (for a 21-room dungeon level) came up with the following results:

–Empty: 9 (43% / 35%)
–Monster: 6 (29% / 20%)
–Monster + Treasure: 3 (14% / 25%)
–Stairs: 1 (5% / 5%)
–Trick/Trap: 2 (10% / 5%)
–Treasure: 0 (0% / 5%)

The first % number is the percentage of the actual content rolls; the second % number is the typical expected percentage spread (per OSRIC guidelines). Another high-empty, low-treasure level unfortunately, but I'll have to make due.

The Hurricane Dungeon – The Curséd Caverns (Level 7)

With this level, we move into the lower third of the Hurricane Dungeon, a series of natural caves and tunnels I titled "The Curséd Caverns." (Yes, it's not a very original name, but that's sort of the point with this throwback adventure.) This was actually the map I drew on our fourth night without power, but I moved some of the maps out of creation order to put similar-looking maps together. I enjoy drawing natural cave networks and I was happy with how all three cavernous maps turned out.

This one is interesting because three tunnels lead off the map , enabling it to link it up with additional levels. It has plenty of loopy-doopiness which is essential for a good cave level, although the southern-most portion of the map is bottlenecked by a single passage.

A major negative issue with this level is the fact that it only has ~20 distinct "rooms," which is slightly less than half the average number of the other levels. I could have increased this number by treating some of the larger caverns as multiple spaces, but I didn't want to get into issues of dungeon logic. Having too many creatures and things crammed into directly adjacent spaces starts to strain believability (despite the fact that the format has pretty low thresholds already).

I seriously considered this option up until the time of writing, but once I started keying the level, I felt it ended up with the right density of encounters. I didn't design these maps with any purpose or even end-use in mind. Were I to create maps specifically for a megadungeon (rather than the reverse happening here), I would make sure that each level had a proper number of rooms (minimum of 30) and enough accessways between the levels.

Speaking of which, I had three staircases and three chutes from the upper levels to connect to this level. I also rolled one result of "Stairs Down 1 Level" in the stocking rolls, and I already had the three existing accessways leading off the map. In addition, one of the stairs from Level 6 continues down to Level 8. I built the various stairs from pieces of the other maps, and added a few extra details from the key like ledges, a bricked-up wall, a set of double doors, a pile of guano, and a pool of magic water. I also created a new tunnel to connect areas 14 and 19, just so that end of the dungeon didn't feel so isolated and linear. When completed, the map came out like this: 

My content stocking rolls (for a 20-room dungeon level) came up with the following results:

–Empty: 9 (45% / 35%)
–Monster: 4 (20% / 20%)
–Monster + Treasure: 4 (20% / 25%)
–Stairs: 1 (5% / 5%)
–Trick/Trap: 2 (10% / 5%)
–Treasure: 0 (0% / 5%)

The first % number is the percentage of the actual content rolls; the second % number is the typical expected percentage spread (per OSRIC guidelines). I was disappointed in the high number of empty spaces and low amounts of treasure on this level, but kept the results as rolled. 

The Hurricane Dungeon – The Chambers of Woe (Level 6)

The Level 6 map is actually the last of the series, the ninth map I drew post-hurricane (and, mercifully, our final night without power, which came on the next afternoon). This is also the last of the "finished" levels in which there is stonework, excavated rooms and corridors, and features like doors and such. The remaining three levels are caves and caverns (with the exception of a finished temple area on Level 9).

I recall designing this map specifically as a maze with chambers, rather than a functional "place." With a few exceptions, the rooms are 30x30 with doors at one or more cardinal points, and most corridors are 50' or less in length. It's a tight, circuitous space without obvious purpose. It reminds me of an architectural circuit board, which perhaps has some sacred geometric significance for the empress's arcane machinations.

 

Compared to other levels, there are fewer secret doors, but all the larger rooms are hidden behind them. I don't recall making that deliberate creative choice, but it's an interesting one from a design point of view. It will also create these tantalizing blank spaces on the party's map, obvious secret locations with difficult to locate entrances far removed from the actual area. I see this level as a place where the empress hid important things inside a baffling maze. (She's insane, so who knows what she's thinking?)

There are also four staircases to other levels, one ascending and three descending. I was able to incorporate the ascending stair into the map for Level 5, and I had two additional staircases down from Level 5 that I needed to add to this map. Finally, I rolled four access routes on the stocking rolls for this level: A chute down one level, a stair down 2 levels, a stair down 3 levels,  and a chimney down 2 levels. Finally-finally, the original map has two teleporting hallways which could be interconnected, or they could lead to other areas/levels.

In the end, trying to add more multi-level stairs into the cavern levels below proved too tricky to resolve in a way that was satisfying, so I kept the chute and the chimney routes, and counted the two teleporting hallways as the stocked stairs, one of which goes to Level 8 and the other to Level 9 (as a backdoor into the evil temple). Doing so also provided me with a rationale for the fire giant who lives on this level. With shading, titles, and all the incidental features added, the map ended up like this:

 My content stocking rolls (for a 44-room dungeon level) came up with the following results:

–Empty: 16 (36% / 35%)
–Monster: 8 (18% / 20%)
–Monster + Treasure: 10 (23% / 25%)
–Stairs: 4 (9% / 5%)
–Trick/Trap: 3 (7% / 5%)
–Treasure: 3 (7% / 5%)

The first % number is the percentage of the actual content rolls; the second % number is the typical expected percentage spread (per OSRIC guidelines).

The Hurricane Dungeon – The Chambers of Woe (Level 5)

Continuing my series on creating this megadungeon, this is the seventh map I drew during the power outage, which became Level 5. Again, this is because I wanted to keep the "finished" levels and the cavern levels together (with the caves being the lowest levels). The original map feels a little uninspired compared to the others, though it is probably a more "classic" dungeon layout.

There are a few interesting features on closer look. Large rooms and long corridors, lots of loopey-doopiness, many secret doors and passageways, false doors marked with a 'T' for "traps," and hey, look at that...stairs to the levels above and below! It's not too bad, actually. The central, cross-shaped feature, includes directional arrows and four movement options. That's cool. (I was certain I cribbed this idea from somewhere, and sure enough, a similar feature is in the OD&D Sample Dungeon.) So, I felt pretty good about what I had to work with as I started fleshing out this level, even if it's a little Plain Jane.

I had already connected the staircase up to Level 4, and I lined up the stairs down to an area on the map I was using for Level 6. That map for Level 6 also contained a staircase up in a different location, so I had to figure out that connection as well. The stocking rolls for Level 4 had also indicated two stairs, a pit shaft, and a trap door and ladder leading to this level, but I had already placed those by the time I began work on Level 5. Finally, my stocking rolls for Level 5 included an additional two staircases and a chimney exiting down from here. Once I added those access routes, along with the room key numbers, a title, and shading, the level looks like this:

 My content stocking rolls (for a 35-room dungeon level) came up with the following results:

–Empty: 11 (31% / 35%)
–Monster: 4 (11.5% / 20%)
–Monster + Treasure: 11 (31% / 25%)
–Stairs: 3 (9% / 5%)
–Trick/Trap: 5 (14% / 5%)
–Treasure: 1 (3% / 5%)

The first % number is the percentage of the actual content rolls; the second % number is the typical expected percentage spread (per OSRIC guidelines).

The Hurricane Dungeon – The Chambers of Woe (Level 4)

The fourth level uses the sixth map I drew, this one on October 2, 2024. Maps 4 and 5 were both cave networks, but I wanted to keep all six "finished" dungeon levels together, with the three cavern levels being at the bottom so I moved the order around. This particular level had some interesting features: Large rooms, a chamber with a huge pool of some sort, and a massive central chamber with an altar and four columned wings projecting out from it. A few secret areas, lots of statues, and a second pool of water provided additional inspiration but, like the previous level map, this one included no access points, neither stairs nor passages leading off-map.

I knew from keying Level 3 that I had added three stair locations down to this level, and there was a fourth stair down from Level 2 as well. I also knew that the next map I was going to use for Level 5 had an access stair drawn on the original, so I would have to place that stairway down on this map. Finally, my stocking rolls came up with five (!) access points, more than twice the average statistical percentage for a level this size. I didn't end up using all of the stocking access points as rolled, which I'll get into further below. After adding all the access points, title, and location numbers, the map looks like this:

My content stocking rolls (for a 41-room dungeon level) came up with the following results:

–Empty: 11 (32% / 35%)
–Monster: 7 (14.5% / 20%)
–Monster + Treasure: 13 (29% / 25%)
–Stairs: 5 (12% / 5%)
–Trick/Trap: 2 (5% / 5%)
–Treasure: 3 (7% / 5%)

The first % number is the percentage of the actual content rolls; the second % number is the typical expected percentage spread (per OSRIC guidelines). Pretty close, statistically, with the "Stairs" result being the only real deviation.

Classic Monsters Revisited – The Tween (Fiend Folio)

While stocking the Hurricane Dungeon, one of the monster results came up as a tween from the AD&D Fiend Folio. That book is mostly a collection of monsters from the UK gaming magazine, White Dwarf, which covered a variety of RPGs in the early days before it became the house mag for Warhammer. Many of these creatures first appeared as submissions to the magazine's Fiend Factory column, by authors of varying levels of expertise and creativity.

Some are well-crafted and interesting, but most are simply variations on other monsters, with few distinguishing characteristics (other than appearance), or are just completely unnecessary. A handful of monsters were contributed by Gary Gygax, pulled from his previously-written adventures and added to what was essentially the second "monster manual" before the third monster manual became the official Monster Manual 2. Certain Fiend Folio monsters are passable-to-great; the rest are hit-or-miss (with lots of complete whiffs).

Having never used a tween before, I was eager to give it a fresh look. The tween's most interesting characteristic is a rudimentary form of 5e's Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic. (Perhaps even its "inspiration"?) The tween is essentially an ethereal "ghost" that attaches itself to a host, forming a shadowy doppelganger that provides a tremendous benefit to its host, but at a high cost to everyone else. The creature's presence is summed up with this wildly generous understatement: 

A character with a tween partner is therefore something of a mixed blessing to any companions.

That's because, while the tween's "partner" (it's host organism) gains the ability to make two dice rolls whenever a roll is required and take the better result, every other creature within fifty feet of the tween must do the same and take the worse result. This includes the tween host's allies. It's a "luck eater," basically, transferring the misfortune of others to the benefit of its host (and it, presumably). This looks awesome on the surface, but it has some enormous flaws.

 For one, by adding this to your campaign, you're doubling nearly every roll made at the table, on both the players' and the DM's side. The description of this ability reads:

(A)ny character or creature with a tween 'partner' has two die rolls instead of one, whenever a die roll is called for, and may select the more advantageous of these rolls. (This applies to 'to hit' rolls, saving throws and the like.)

The phrase, "...whenever a die roll is called for" is a bit ambiguous as to the type. (Is it all die rolls?) We can assume, based on the two examples provided, that the design intends for this to apply only to rolls made with a d20 (as is the case with Advantage in 5e), and not to rolls for things like hit points, weapon damage, etc.

But what about percentile rolls for success, such as for thief skills? The tween's description suggests that it is manipulating the environment around its host to make this "luck" happen (guiding the host's weapon, for example), so shouldn't it also apply to finding a trap or picking a lock? 

In any case, the result is a lot of extra rolling for the host and his fellow party members. And that's not even taking into account that the DM will have to roll twice for every single NPC and monster within 50' and run all those numbers as well. The game will inevitably slow to a dice-rolling, number-crunching crawl.

A second flaw with this design is that the tween's presence would be an intolerable situation for most players (I would think). I mean, if I were a player in this group, my character would have to deal with the situation in the short term until we left the dungeon and got back to base, but that tween-inflicted character won't be making a return trip (not with my guy, at least). 

I can't imagine any party of players accepting "bad luck" on every roll (according to statistical breakdowns of 5e Disadvantage, this equates to –5 or so on average). There's just no way. That's an enormous penalty in AD&D and a recipe for interpersonal conflict between characters (and perhaps even players). It will get someone killed eventually. I can see a character being forced out of a group over this situation, which sucks. It's one thing if the characters create that conflict themselves; it's quite another when a random roll forces it on them.

Worse still, the tween can't be countered by normal spell means, like Remove Curse. The description says that once a tween selects its host, it "...will remain permanently with him until he or the tween dies." That's pretty definitive, so it doesn't sound like the party can convince the creature to bugger off. The only way to be rid of the tween's luck effect is to enter the Ethereal Plane and kill it. But it's a Neutral creature ostensibly trying to help its host, which may pose a moral dilemma for Good characters (this is kind of cool). A lenient reading of one line gives DMs a bit of an out if they want to grasp it: 

The tween has the ability to see a few seconds into the future and is able to increase its host's luck.

Those two clauses suggest that perhaps this ability can be turned on and off by the tween, instead of being always-on. That would change the calculus dramatically, giving the player an incredible ability, but requiring them to use it situationally (mainly by separating himself from the party by 50' or more during combat... a tricky proposition). Still, a lone thief with such a tween would be a powerhouse. 

I don't believe that is the intent, though. I think this is just a dick-move monster, as designed. This is not an uncommon situation with the Fiend Folio.

I've kept the tween encounter in the Hurricane Dungeon to stay true to the dice rolls, and I'm curious to see what happens if one of my players ever "acquires" it. In the level 2 writeup, I adjusted the tween's effect to be a straight –4 / –20% penalty to others, so as to reduce the number of rolls the DM has to make. The host rolls twice for their bonus, and player allies can opt to either take the straight penalty or make two rolls at disadvantage instead.

For my home game, I may even alter the tween's effect even further to make it on/off (at will, triggered at the beginning of the round), and say that every time a player used the advantage ability, a single random creature — friend or foe — within 50' would suffer the disadvantage roll (instead of every other creature). 

That way, it's a bit more balanced and usable, and the number of extra rolls is kept to a minimum. I like magic items with caveats that make them somewhat dangerous to use, and this is like that. Fellow players may be able to more easily swallow the choice to accept a personal risk of penalty in order to give a comrade a big extra bonus in a critical moment (and potentially inflict the penalty on an enemy). It then becomes a tactical decision, rather than the "mixed blessing" of an arbitrary, likely-lethal, party-busting curse.

The Hurricane Dungeon – The Upper Works (Level 1)

The first level of the megadungeon is, in fact, the first hurricane map I drew on the night of September 29. The storm rolled in around 3–4 in the morning, but when I'd gone to bed a few hours earlier, my area wasn't really expected to get much beyond some heavy rains and high winds. The hurricane took a big swing to the northwest and passed right over us on its way to some Biblical-level destruction less than 100 miles north. That area is still badly messed up 11 months later.

I woke up on my office couch around 4 AM because I could hear the roof creaking (never a good sign). You could feel the shifting air pressure. I got up and looked outside, but noped back inside when I realized how intense things had gotten. I'm originally from South Florida and went through many hurricanes as a kid, so I knew this was a big storm. I got in bed in my shorts and t-shirt, with my heavy boots in easy reach, and just lay there listening to the winds howling and the sheets of rain lashing the house.

I'd heard some trees going down at some distance away, and we lost our power around 5, but at 6 AM I heard the first tree(s) come down in my yard. A neighbor's mimosa fell across my backyard, taking a second tree (and part of his fence) with it. That was it! I got out of bed and started a vigil. I live in an older section of my city (my house was built in 1929) and have several hundred-year oaks within crushing distance (not to mention a few dozen smaller, but still-dangerous trees). 

So far, just the two trees had come down near me, but as I stood at my back door and watched, another 12 trees in my yard came down between 6 and 8 AM. My house sits on a moderate hill slope, and after the the torrential rains soaked the ground, the hurricane winds came up the slope, "against the grain" of the tree roots, and just toppled them, one after the other. Luckily, none of the oaks fell, but my neighborhood was now officially a disaster zone. My girlfriend slept through the whole thing. A crazy time and hard to believe it has already (only?) been a year.

The hand-drawn map came about while reading the DMG by candlelight that first night. I got tired of reading but felt some creative energy, so I just started doodling on a graphing pad. I began by rolling on the random dungeon design tables, but got bored with that so I started over drawing on my own, letting the rooms and corridors flow out of the pencil without any real design concept. I love creating maps and it usually doesn't take me long to start sorting out a good, logical floorplan. I ended up with this map:

Since this was only a drawing exercise I wasn't worrying about connections or routes between levels. As drawn, there is a staircase from "a" level above in the upper-left-center of the map that serves as the level "entrance." A second staircase to the left of that descends to "another" level below. There's also some teleporting halls with 4 entry/exit points, though there is an error, with only three letters (A–C) represented instead of four (A–D).

As I began developing this map into a connected dungeon complex, I realized I would need to create additional routes between the levels. I did not want to mark up the original hand-drawn maps (call me sentimental), so I used Photoshop to add some details to the digital image. Some of these details are copied from fragments of the existing map and repurposed elsewhere. Other details were hand-drawn on paper, scanned in, and converted into .pngs which I dropped into the map image.

I also created fonts for numbers and upper- and lower-case letters from my own handwriting, with the same pens I used to draw the map. After dropping in the room key numbers and a level title, fixing the issue with the mislabeled teleporting hall, placing a new grid, and adding shading to the solid walls of the dungeon, I ended up with this map:

Next, I settled on a methodology for stocking the dungeon, relying mostly on the AD&D/OSRIC tables to flesh out the level contents. My first set of rolls (over a total of 42 dungeon locations) came up with the following results:

–Empty: 19 (45% / 35%)
–Monster: 8 (19% / 20%)
–Monster + Treasure: 10 (24% / 25%)
–Stairs: 2 (5% / 5%)
–Trick/Trap: 0 (0% / 5%)
–Treasure: 3 (7% / 5%)

The first % number is the percentage of the actual content rolls; the second % number is the typical expected percentage spread (per OSRIC guidelines).

The Sinister Secret of Zenopus' Tower – Part 6: The Naga's Lair

 

 

This penultimate post represents the final piece of the kilodungeon site. It uses the dungeon portion of the original AD&D adventure: N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile Gods. I'm actually not a big fan of the module as published. It's very railroady, and the cult activities in the village of Orlane are meh. The actual naga's lair with the troglodytes is pretty well done, however, and it snaps perfectly into the overall site concept. 

Its inclusion also gives me a third "faction boss" to use as a counterweight to the two magic-users competing over the site. She is gathering her forces to first take over the Sea Caves level and expel the pirates, then take control of the Dungeon level to capture its wealth and power. Once she accomplishes all that, she will send her enthralled human minions to subvert and undermine local authorities, and take over the human settlements in this desolate region on the periphery of civilization.

The entrance to this site is down in the swamp below the manor bluff, but anyone looking off the cliff can potentially catch a glimpse of the berm. The entrance can be reached either by sea or by scaling down the steep slope to the NE. There is also a back way into the dungeon via the Sea Caves level. In fact, several of the naga's minions are enthralled pirates who were captured in those caves by her troglodyte agents.

I got rid of everything in the module up to the naga's lair, though I kept some of the swamp description and its wandering encounter table. I added two other entries—a mud viper and 1–3 giant lizards—to make for an even six encounters, and I renamed the module's 1 HD "giant leech" (AD&D) to a "huge leech" instead (Labyrinth Lord's giant leeches are 6 HD creatures).

The Sinister Secret of Zenopus' Tower – Part 2: The Dungeon Level

In Part 1, I rearranged the old manor house from U1 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh to serve as the anchor point for the rest of the other adventure maps. Next, I took the original map from the Sample Dungeon in Holmes basic and sized it to the same 4:1" grid I used for the manor map. The grid in the Sample Dungeon map is hand-drawn and inaccurate, so I aligned the central vault (area A) to the accurate grid and adjusted all the passages and rooms that branch out from it. Then I placed an overlay of the manor outline over area A.

Original Sample Dungeon Map with Manor Overlay (scale = 10')

To fit the geographic location in my campaign world chosen for this site, the Sea Caves need to face south instead of west. To make that change and keep the basic flow of the dungeon, I also need to reposition rooms H, I, K, L, and M, as well as the connection from room J. 

Rotting Effects in D&D

As I re-acquaint myself with the rules of Basic/Advanced D&D, I'm remembering some of the odd bits and pieces of the game that we had to figure out for ourselves back in the day. One of these bits is the effect of "rotting" as a result of a select few monsters found in the game, most notably the mummy and the violet fungus.

5e uses a system of damage types to reconcile many of these incongruities from earlier editions, so for these monsters (and others like them), the game applies a set amount of damage and classifies it as "necrotic." In the case of mummies, the victim continues losing hit points from necrotic damage over time and can't heal until a Remove Curse spell is applied, whereas violet fungi get 1d4 attacks that do straight necrotic damage (up to 4d8 in a single round, which is nasty but not that dangerous to mid-level and higher characters), with no other lingering effect. It's a simple system that makes clear exactly what happens to the victim (one of the things 5e tends to do pretty well), but doesn't carry the same degree of threat as their AD&D counterparts.

For the AD&D versions, both creatures' rotting effects are extremely deadly at any level, but the actual physical results are not entirely clear. I started running a campaign for my tabletop group using a hybrid of the "Advanced" versions of Old School Essentials and Labyrinth Lord rulesets, but I lean heavily on AD&D to help with some of the behind-the-scenes granularity, and to adapt some of the monsters and magic items that aren't in OSE or LL.

"Why not just run AD&D?" you may ask. Ease of entry, mostly. The girls have only ever played 5e and were getting overwhelmed by the increasing complexity of the game as they leveled up, so I wanted to give them an easier set of rules to manage that still provides a fair range of flavor to play with. I also need to re-acclimate myself to the "old ways" of running the game, so it seemed like a good way to go. My plan is to ease them into AD&D as they get more familiar with how the older system works.

In any case, I dropped a single violet fungus into the dungeon I'm running, but as I read the Monster Manual entry, I found it to be fairly vague on what happens when the fungus touches someone. They get 4 attacks as a 3HD monster, and if one of their branches makes contact with a target: 

The excretion from these branches rots flesh in but one melee round unless a saving throw versus poison is made or a cure disease is used.

This immediately brings up several questions in my mind:

1. No damage is listed, so what effect does "...rots flesh..." have?

2. Does it matter where you are hit? AD&D doesn't have a hit location rule, so do we make one up or does the rot simply kill you outright?

3. Obviously, if you fail the saving throw vs. Poison (also categorized as a save vs. Death), you have one round to apply a Cure Disease or the rot takes effect, but why is it not Neutralize Poison instead to match the save category (as far as I know, avoiding disease does not involve a saving throw)?

4. It's not an issue in OSE/LL, but in AD&D, Cure Disease has a casting time of 1 turn (10 rounds). Does this mean you need to start applying it within one round (minute), but you then need 9 more rounds of uninterrupted casting to avoid the rotting effect? Neutralize Poison has a casting time of 7 segments, which seems more usable under these circumstances, but you would still need to cast it within 3 segments of the victim being touched or, presumably, the rot would kill the victim before the spell was complete (unless, again, you simply need to start casting it within 1 round to prevent the effect).
   

The online consensus seems to be that if a violet fungus hits you, then you will die in one round if you fail the save and have no Cure Disease spell available. That's pretty rough, especially since the text does not say explicitly that the victim dies. 

Tunnels Beneath the Earth — Week 10 (#Dungeon23)

So, my goal to catch up posting new material by the weekend failed miserably. I think I've decided—starting in April—to reconfigure my "publishing" schedule to move away from calendar weeks (my original goal was a weekly Sunday post). Now, I'll post whenever I complete a level section (7 rooms) so the sections don't keep getting broken up by the vagaries of the calendar.

I've also stopped putting future connecting level/room #s into the current keys. It's easy to figure out what section a level connector goes in, but stating the destination room# ahead of time has caused me a few problems once I get to that level/section and have to make the connections line up. Leaving them blank and backfilling them later makes my job easier.

This week's posting provides additional info on the nature and use of crystals and crystal devices found in the dungeon (much of which I ported over and adapted from my Deep Vaults concept).

__________

"The Palace"
Level 3 (MAR) – The City of the Ancients
Section 1, Cont. (03/01 – 03/07)

Scale: Each square = 20x20 ft.

Tunnels Beneath the Earth — Week 9 (#Dungeon23)

As I feared, the most difficult part of the #Dungeon23 project (for me) isn't writing a room every day, it's posting the work on a timely basis. 

Between spring landscaping projects, freelance writing projects, and running two D&D campaigns (one weekly campaign online and one bi-weekly campaign irl), most of my free time is spent creating the D23 content. The content is done, I just haven't had much extra time to post it to the blog.

This posting (for week #9) still puts me a full week (#10) behind, which becomes two weeks if I don't post again by this weekend (the current week is #11). My goal is to finish this week's rooms, take pictures of my completed pages, transcribe the pages into a doc, and then post the last two weeks by this weekend (or early next week). That will completely catch me up. I predict falling behind again, though.

I'm fairly pleased with the development of the dungeon so far (one-fifth of the total). It's holding my daily creative interest, and I've sketched out the entire thing in broad strokes, so that's a great sign for being able to complete it.

I was trying to create Tunnels Beneath the Earth completely from scratch (stealing just a few unused ideas from old notebooks which seemed to fit the theme), but elements from my Deep Vaults megadungeon concept began bleeding heavily into TuBE. I finally came to terms with the fact that I will likely never get around to finishing DV, so I may as well just merge the two concepts together.

It's not a wholesale union; the factions are all different, for example, and TuBE's scale utterly dwarfs DV's, but I'm stealing many of the sci-fantasy elements I liked from DV (particularly the crystals and some of the weird technology). I introduced a bit of that material in Level 3 (starting this week), and I started calling the "impervious blue metal" by its new, super-obvious name: impervium.

I have some regrets about how I structured the dungeon at the beginning. I wasn't thinking about the calendar dates; I was looking at the project as 7 rooms per section, with 52 sections total over 12 levels. I did not take into account that each month doesn't have 28 days (only one does, in fact...who knew??).  I don't want to just switch over to the calendar-less format because I like the conceit of having a monthly level theme.

This isn't that big a deal, structurally, but it means most of the weekly blog postings will cover pieces of two different sections, instead of one clean section at a time. Then at the end of the month, I have to add 2-3 "bonus" rooms to close out the calendar month/dungeon level.

If I could do it over, I would key my rooms to the calendar date. I think a lot of people did it that way, but I am dumb and took a weird approach to the structure. I may try to fix that situation here shortly.

On to Week 9. Fingers crossed I can get everything else posted by the weekend...

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"The Upper Caves"
Level 2 (FEB) – The Caves Between
Section 4, Cont. (02/22 – 02/28)

Scale: Each square = 20x20 ft.

Tunnels Beneath the Earth — Week 6 (#Dungeon23)

"The Waterworks"
Level 2 (FEB) – The Caves Between
Section 1, Cont. (2/1 – 2/7)

Tunnels Beneath the Earth — Week 4 (#Dungeon23)

"The Crypts"
Level 1 (JAN) – The Upper Works
Section 4 (1/22 – 1/28)

Tunnels Beneath the Earth — Week 3 (#Dungeon23)

"The Storerooms"
Level 1 (JAN) – The Upper Works
Section 3 (1/15 – 1/21)