Salvaging "Failed" Projects

FREEBIE: The 2023 Meaties - TTRPG Award Zine

Resurrecting My #Dungeon23

With the end of the year just around the corner, folks have been talking once again about #Dungeon23, the megadungeon challenge of writing one room a day for a full calendar year. Most folks are bringing it up facetiously, knowing that they (and likely most of their followers) fell off not all that long after they started. This reminded me that I hadn’t dug out my own #Dungeon23 notebook since the move. After a short search through our overstuffed living room closet, I managed to find it and spent a half hour or so reading back through my partial megadungeon.

I fell off long before the move. Between my part-time job and my full-time writing and design work, I was already writing every day so the added daily checkmark of #Dungeon23 inevitably fell off my to-do list, and the notebook started gathering dust on the back corner of my desk during my last several months back in Indianapolis. Still, I did manage 50 days in a row which feels like an accomplishment (a much smaller one, but an accomplishment none the less).

You can actually see my daily progress from back then via this Twitter thread.

Looking back over it, I was pretty pleased with what I’d created: A surface-level region with 7 points of interest, a first floor (see below) with 25 rooms, a second floor with about 16 rooms, several factions, 7 or so d6 encounter/loot roll tables, and some basic lore around the edges. Obviously, this falls far short of the #Dungeon23 ideal (365 rooms across 12 floors). This dungeon was far from mega, and yet, it was still the largest dungeon I’d ever created across all my years of homebrew GMing and writing TTRPG stuff. Walking through the space in my mind as my more detached modern day self, I was reminded of the cyclic dungeon generation (from Sersa Victory) I used to help give build 4 smaller areas and sub-objectives into each floor, and it really struck me as an interesting space to navigate as a party (albeit in need of a bit more connective tissue here and there).

It was then, after reading and enjoying the contents of the notebook, that I had to decide what to do with it, if anything. Should I pick back up where I left off? Could I convince myself the dream of #Dungeon23 wasn’t dead? Should I set it aside as a fun novelty? Or should I make something out of that work? I did enjoy what I’d read after all, and it was a considerable amount of writing I’d already done. I thought on it for a day or two, ran a poll with folks to see if they’d want something like that system-free or statted for a specific dungeoncrawl system (which would be more work), and considering turning it into a proper adventure. In the end, I decided it was worth the elbow grease to polish it up and bring it out into the world. It will not be a complete megadungeon, but it can be The Deep Hot Heart of the World - Part 1, a 2-floor, 50-room dungeon that could occupy a table for months and months. During the next slow chunk of time in my schedule, I’d pick up at Floor 3 and build slowly towards a Part 2 sometime down the line.

For now, I’m whittling away at it (it’s third in my current project priority rank). I have transcribed all of it over from my notebook, and I’ve recreated the original maps in Dungeon Scrawl for ease of future use. From here, it’s all about finishing up the 2nd floor (this is the largest amount of writing work to do on it) and then going through the entire manuscript as it was written in the notebook, expanding where I originally trimmed things down in the moment just to fit on the physical page, and then making sure that my system-free language is consistent (and useful) throughout.

For me, #Dungeon23 and this recent reconnection I made with it was a great example of how even a failed project can be useful. I learned more about dungeon design in those 50 days than I had in my whole life prior to that point. I drew my own maps (and actually kind of liked them)! Now, I am going back and seeing I still enjoy a lot of what’s here and want to pretty it up and polish it into a proper release, not the release I may have originally envisioned, but the beginning of something bigger long term and my first foray into super classic-style dungeon delving.

So even if you will probably fail, just go out and do the thing. There’s value in the attempt alone.

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FREEBIE: The Meaties Award Zine

For a while, I’ve been joking about doing my own Official and Exclusive TTRPG Awards, and this is exactly what that is! Inside, you’ll see exactly what I chose to have it take on this easily home-printable fanzine form and what games I selected from the last year (or so).

The winners will be getting (if they are up for giving me their mailing addresses) a special color print variant of the zine, limited to 7 or so copies, as well as some MCGW/Meaties stickers.

Download the full fanzine HERE!

Also, you can find the zine and grab it for free (or pay-what-you-want) over on Itch if you’d like to have it in your library over there.

This was a really fun project to put together over the last few days, and I hope you enjoy reading it. It’s definitely something a bit less formal and more personal than a lot of my other freebie work.

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More Cool Stuff

If you missed the campaign or want to pick up any of the individual modules (plus more from several of the bundle creators), Outer Rim: Uprising preorders are live now on Backerkit!

Marco Serrano at SpicyTunaRPG just dropped a free quickstart for his new game Greenhorns. I got to play it a few weeks ago, and it’s got a ton of cool stuff going on. You are chosen by a machine god to take part in the creation of new planets across the universe. Thematically, it reminds me of Destiny or anything with super-powered characters and divine warriors. My character, Lamplight, was basically a Destiny warlock wielding a laser-firing prism blade who died in heroic combat against a demon terrorizing a shifting plane of a forming planet. My allies took up my sword to cut them down and win the day.

Roque Romero (who did all of the art for The Bloodfields at Blackstar Station) just released an art pack of his reimaginings of classic fantasy TTRPG monsters and characters. Check it out HERE!

Mint over at There’s An RPG for That on Tumblr recently put up a Google Sheets playkit for A Sunless Space, my Andor-inspired microgame of rebellious flashpoints against an endless empire! It’s a great resource for anyone playing virtually (or just wanting to keep their notes and info all in a relatively safe, online space).

I was recently on The Weekly Scroll playing Lilliputian, a game of tiny sailors on the open sea, by Matthew Morris aka ManaDawnTTG (the full game is only $5 btw). We got to play Matt’s newest adventure for the game “Isle at the Edge of the Horizon” (just $1). My character was, like all good TTRPG characters, a weird little freak with a penchant for drink and a variety of voices. It was a really fun time!

The Panic Table recently debuted their big, in-studio Mothership actual play series, and there’s even a violent cameo from the Swords of Sinclair (from The Bloodfields at Blackstar Station)! It’s really interesting to see the modern AP style combined with Mothership, and I think they’ve already done some really cool stuff with their world setup, the set (that table is especially cool), and some tweaks to the system (shifting Sanity to Composure, for example). I’m intrigued to follow along and see how Mothership’s lethality and ongoing conditions may come to shape a longer-form campaign in this style. For Mothership fans, there’s also loads of little easter egg references in there too, for both first and third-party modules.

Ryan from The Weekly Scroll commissioned this really cool zine box from Loz the Eye Wizard to hold MCGW releases! I’m honored, and it looks killer!

Read the Fucking Manual (RTFM) continues to be my favorite TTRPG podcast! A recent highlight for me was their examination of the classic DnD module The Keep on the Borderlands (which I’ve been running for about a year as part of a long, ongoing Tacticians of Ahm playtest). I found some aspects of it surprising given its age and my assumptions, but I also agreed with a lot of the RTFM crew’s takeaways too. Check it out HERE!

The Missives from the MeatCastle recently passed 1,700 subscribers which is INCREDIBLE! Thank you all for the continued time, attention, and support. It means the world (and makes these so much more fun to write)!

Leeches cling to 5 [2d6 roll: 5] skeletons, their bones a strange blackish blue are stained in swirling patterns and writhing with leeches that glisten in the little light. Beards still hang from their skulls. Several spears and swords rest among them. They writhe slowly in place.

At their center, you see another skeleton. A shock of white, nearly glowing hair hanging from its head. Leeches crawl inside its rib cage. A slew of golden rings hang from its bony fingers, rattling as its slowly moves. As its mouth opens, the squealing of the leeches—all of them—form a single voice.

"Well, now... I was not expecting you, but I am not one to turn away guests of any kind, be they invited or not. Come, rest here after your descent."

My Play-By-Blog of Luke Gearing’s The Isle continues over on Tumblr! We are up to Entry #12 now and (as you can see from the excerpt from #11 above) things are really starting to get interesting/exciting/deadly. You can find the full repository HERE if you’d like to start at the beginning and get caught up or you can find the most recent entry HERE and vote in the active poll to help decide what happens next!

I have teased a few small pieces of the work-in-progress draft for Goblin Planet, my next big Mothership project, over on social media. A few of the loadouts from the new Goblin player class as well as a few entries in the “Teleportation Gone Wrong” table.

I’m still fairly early on, but I’ve been reading Up in the Old Hotel, a book collecting a ton of Joseph Mitchell’s old stories for the New Yorker. It’s a vivid, intriguing look at a selection of weird, unique folks from old New York City. For TTRPG creators and GMs, I think it’s also a fascinating look at just how varied the life of a single person can be and great inspiration for NPCs of all types. I can only hope to create characters with 10% of the depth of any of the folks described in these stories.

Lastly, I’ve been trying to get more exercise, take time to clear my head, and just explore more of my new home here in Newfoundland. As part of that, I’ve been publishing some quiet hike videos and drone footage.

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Thanks again for reading! See you next year! - Christian