My Dungeon23 Plans - Excavation of the Old Fort

I'm planning to do the Dungeon23 project in 2023. If you don't know, it's an idea to design a megadungeon, one room a day for a whole year, divided up into one floor for each month. For more details, you can read Sean McCoy's post about it here. As I was thinking of what I wanted the dungeon to look like, I found these tweets by Iko of the Lost Bay.

 

I don't trust Twitter to stay up through the weekend so here's a screenshot.

 

I was inspired by this. I love a good mixing of sci-fi and fantasy, and it's been a staple of role-playing games since pretty much the beginning.

 

 

I had the initial idea to combine the themes by having a more traditional fantasy dungeon planarly intersect a space station. After a day of brainstorming, I have my rough draft of what I want my dungeon to look like. Everything can (and will) change over the year, I'm sure, but I want to have a roadmap of how to combine these ideas.

 

Art by David Wenzel for the comic book Aliens: Stalker

Here's what I have so far. There will be 13 dungeon levels, because I want a definite middle level. I'll refer to the fantasy elements as The Dungeon and the sci-fi elements as The Outpost. To show how the two planes are blending and mixing together, for each element (room, enemy, treasure, etc.) I'll roll a d12. If the result is equal to or higher than the current dungeon level, then the element belongs to The Dungeon. If the result is lower than the current level, then it belongs to The Outpost. This way, level 1 will be entirely fantasy, level 13 will be entirely futuristic, and level 7 (the middle) will be a 50/50 split.

Here are my current notes for the different regions and floor types of the whole dungeon:

13 Floors to the Dungeon

1. Old ruins (above ground)
2. Old ruins
3. Labyrinth
4. Forgotten City
5. Forgotten City - Palace
6. Temple to the Profane One
7. The Nexus
   
8. Outpost
9. Outpost
10. Outpost - Ground Level
11. Templum Ingeniātorum
12. Templum Ingeniātorum
13. Templum Ingeniātorum

 

By Henry Clarke

Layout:

1. The Royal Expedition (Above ground) - An archaeological dig, commissioned by the queen to explore an old fort. It is believed that it was built by the Sun King - the founder of the current dynasty. The area contains guards, archaeologists, and quartermasters who will serve as shopkeepers once the party has earned their trust. Each group has their respective leader. The surrounding area is relatively wild, with some bandits and wild animals. Complications in the dig have temporarily halted the efforts of the archaeologists.
2. The Old Fort of the Sun King (Levels 1-3) - The old fort, including the extensive above ground ruins. Goblins once lived here but the presence of the expedition drove them down deeper. Bandits have been sneaking in at night to look for valuables. Levels 2 and 3 are more untouched - only the goblins know the way down and they covered their tracks. These levels contain more monsters and an underworld ecosystem.
3. The Forgotten City (Levels 4-5) - An old, forgotten ruin that the fort was built on. It contains a temple to one of the Old Ones, an ancient, profane deity whose worship is long considered taboo.
4. The Forbidden Temple (Level 6) - The temple, remnants of the old cult still exist here in a perverse form.
5. The Nexus (Level 7) - The breaking point between realities. Elements of the fort, the forgotten city, the outpost, and the templum all coexist here in chaos.
6. Expedition VII Broadcast Relay Outpost (Levels 8-10) - A research station build on a distant planet. It was built near an ancient, alien structure in order to study it. It was one of 13 on this planet, all studying similar ancient structures. It was believed that whoever build the structures may be a forerunner to human life. Over time, the other outposts mysteriously went silent until this one was the last one operating. When a resupply vessel finally arrived, even this outpost was abandoned - everyone either dead or missing. 
7. Templum Ingeniātorum (Temple of the Engineers) (Levels 11-13) - An ancient structure built by an unknown alien species. Its true purpose was to be a containment facility for a dangerous bioweapon, but the human researchers believed it to be a temple. At some point, the containments were breached, causing the fall of the outpost. 

 

Genoese towers in the Black Sea by Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky

Every project needs things to steal from inspiration. Here's My Appendix N so far for the dungeon:

d13 Places to mine for inspiration

1. Mothership RPG
• Dead Planet
• What We Give to Alien Gods
  
2. Alien series
• Alien
• Prometheus
• Alien Covenant
  
3. 2400
• Cosmic Highway
• Orbital Decay
• Xot
  
• Tempus Diducit
• Zone
  
• Data Loss
• Eos
• Legends
  
4. Event Horizon
5. Sunshine
6. The Abyss
   
7. Expedition Barrier Peaks/DCC #79 Frozen in Time
8. Into the Odd/Screams Amongst the Stars
9. Dwarf Fortress
10. Cairn
11. Mutant Crawl Classics
    
12. The Mountains of Madness
13. DEEP by Darren Bartley