My #dungeon23 Process: Oh lord! Oh it's already started! AHHHHHHHH

 So as many of you know #dungeon23 has begun! For the uninitiated, the idea is that you write (or key ((or sketch?))) one room every day of 2023, and by the end you'll have a 365 room dungeon (likely split into 12 levels for each of the months). Across the internet you'll find plenty of people sharing early looks, process breakdowns, and all kinds of other stuffs. While I myself will be trying to post my daily progress on Twitter to keep myself accountable, I thought I aught to go into a bit of what my process looks like which can best be summarized as follows:

The #dungeon23 bus leaves in 10 seconds, hope you're ready!

PRELUDE

Now, upon initially hearing about #dungeon23 I wasn't planning on participating. Mega Dungeons were never super my thing, and I wasn't much of a fantasy writer. I was plenty excited to see what people did, but I was counting myself out and doing absolutely no prep or thinking about it. That is until my friend sent me this:

As you can probably tell from the time stamp, this was going to be cutting it pretty tight. I didn't even know what I would do for #dungeon23. And then this happened:

So within the span of ~4 hours, thanks to a query from a trusted friend and some inspiration from the love of my life, I went from not wanting to do #dungeon23 to being pretty sure that maybe I wanted to participate. So I did what anyone in my position would do: Completely forget about it and crunch out a d1000 Wild Magic Table so I could say I released something in 2022. Cue New Year's morning:

DAY 1 - PROCESS

Technically I started 2023 buzzed and playing Fortnite while listening to the soundtrack of to The Sound of Music (1965), but I don't particularly count that as part of my process nor particularly influential. What was influential was the post-buzz dehydration haze when I woke up, and the IBS-induced 30 minute sitting session that my day started with. With no prep, no method, no firm idea of what #dungeon23 really even meant to me I knew a few things for sure: 

• I had to go to work in 3 hours.
• I wasn't going to be doing a traditional mega dungeon, so I was already unbound by the unofficial rules of the challenge.
• Whatever I was going to do needed to be low effort and portable.
• I hadn't gotten to write notes in a physical notebook in far too long.
• I really wanted to play the Dead Space remake.

After my mid-excretion reflections, I was full of resolve (or at least relief) to do something low effort, low pressure, and low commitment. My personal rules for #dungeon23 were simple:

Once a day, sit down and write something in a notebook about the same massive ship crawl. When done, take a picture and post it online. By the end I'll have... Something at least.

Generally speaking I want to do at least one room a day, but some days may involve 5 rooms, or no rooms but a bunch of items. You get the point. The big goal was to make sure I was making every day. Simple.

Now with all the prep I didn't do the question that remained was simple: What the hell was I making?

Since I had such a limited amount of time, I decided to prioritize grabbing a fresh notebook (in this case one of these Yansanido Spiral Notebooks I got some time ago) and a Number 2 Ticonderoga pencil (because I don't trust myself with a pen just yet) and just starting. I slapped on the second track on the Dead Space OST and began considering where to start. Well, where does any space horror start? Usually on the doomed horse you ride in on. I usually go towards mythology when naming things, so I opted to call their vessel the Hephaestus 5A-8 (God of Metalworking? Repair team? Get it?) 

Before anything else I knew this was the one bastion for the players. This was their keep on the borderlands and it was fragile. Sure it had everything you could need; Energy recharges, plenty of O2, crafting bench, bathrooms and sleeping quarters, even transportation! But if that ship gets destroyed? You're just another resident of the derelict now.

It seemed like a solid place to start, so I keyed the few rooms of "Floor 0" - Was I doing a bunch of rooms on Day 1 against the challenges goals? Yes. But not against mine. Especially given these separate rooms really were more like one shared space.

The keying itself was purely pragmatic, what I thought the ship would reasonably have, and from a system neutral angle. It wasn't until day 2 that I finally decided I'd be writing this for use with BOX Engine, but that didn't matter. What mattered is that the space felt gameable, toyetic, like the kinds of toys I'd want to have as a player.

As I posted my little work I realized I needed a name for the derelict you were entering. As a nod to Dead Space I definitely wanted to go with something Japanese and also make it a mining vessel of some kind. Thus the United Earth Resource Administration (UERA) was formed, partially because saying it phonetically (yura) is pretty fun! Next was the ships name, for that I went with Daikokuten, a deity I'd once heard about when studying Shinto-Buddhism (a god of destruction that warped into a god of wealth through the transition to Japan) - Something about those two elements felt perfect for an asteroid cracker. Plus Project Eve Stellar Blade has me thinking about butts angelic / many armed and eyed space monsters, which in turn vaguely reminds me of Azura's Wrath which itself draws from Hindu and Buddhist iconography and theming, so like IDK maybe there's something there with the Shinto Buddhism. IDK it's only day 1. And yes this the wild idea association that guides my process.

DAY 2 - PROGRESS

So I had some vague semblance of a premise and did a solid hour of work on 1/1/23 - Now it was time to start figuring out what was actually going on.

The first step was choosing a system. I chose my own, BOX Engine, because it'd give me an excuse to work on that system more and it would help me cut my teeth on adventure writing in a system I wrote. It was also a system that I designed to be very "room by room" encountery without those encounters needing a terrible lot of detail besides some simple stats and orientation. So hopefully that'd help. Who knows.

The next step was to figure out my big NPCs, the movers and shakers the players would be bumping up against. I don't particularly subscribe to the Great Man theory of history, but damn if it doesn't make for some juicy drama. Plus everyone's been making little pantheons and this post about small gods had been living in the back of my head. So my play makers became gods in the microcosm of the U.E.R.A. Daikokuten's plight. They can also help give a bit more direction for players who decide not to cut their losses and run.

In fact I hadn't considered what's to stop them from cutting their losses and running. Maybe it isn't that you're on routine maintenance but you really are delving in for fun and profit. Much to consider. 

I also was considering the bit about Factions from Prismatic Wasteland's Hex Crawl Checklist Part 2 (and the linked Factions and Stature) - So with all that in mind, 5 factions seemed to fit the bill of what I needed. 5 varying goals and deities all vying for control of this forsaken ship. They are:

• The God of Flesh: I haven't quite named my legally distinct Necromorphs, but this is ironically the least developed of the ideas. You get the vibe tho. Virus = Space monster. Cut their limbs.
• The God of Machines: Iris OS (a cheeky reference to the holder of the eye of Horus and the judge of the Egyptian underworld) is a love letter to everything Durandal and Shodan, but maybe with a bit more reserve. The ship's AI has a newfound freedom, but still a desire to save all that it can.
• The One True God: Like any good Catholic boy making a horror game, I need to rep monotheistic religion is the most esoteric and cult-like way I could. Enter the worshipers of the One True God and their Church of True Divinity. They're lead by the ever charismatic Sha Baker, a man with a voice like a hot buttermilk biscuit. ((And yes Sha is another Egyptian reference))
• The God of Arms: U.E.R.A. of course has its own security force on the ship. As of now I'm thinking their goal is to destroy everything on the ship and wipe away all trace of the Flesh God, including themselves and the players. They also control the armory. They're lead by Hellena Chen, of course named that because I just thought it sounded nice.
• The God of Scrap: I spent a long time thinking what would be a good 5th faction to add in (besides smaller fragments of civilian factions and the miners that were left alive) and then it dawned on me: Space Pirates. But I wanted to put a bit of a twist on them, so they're more like space scrappers. They're just here to pull parts, they don't want to hurt no one. Their leader is the gangly Denz Larowitz. A completely made up name for a completely made up era.

Now this was shaping up to not just be a location but a whole damn adventure. It's worth noting that this that fittingly) Gradient Descent is the only adventure / keyed dungeon I've really enjoyed reading start to finish. So I'm going to be going back to that at some point as my gold standard.

And thus, despite no prep and no prior consideration, I'm in #dungeon23 and having a blast! In a lot of ways, I'm glad I did no prep or research because it makes the whole thing feel haphazard (and thus low stress) from the get-go. I'm excited to try to keep up this routine and maybe have something I can share with others by the end~