Dice Goblin

In the 2 years that I’ve been making and publishing RPG things, I think I’ve gotten a pretty good grasp at my strengths and weaknesses.

TL;DR: I made a cool dungeon, go check it out.

I think I’m pretty good at making rulesets, capturing vibes and scenes and dynamics in things you can actually play with dice. I’m quite a good worldbuilder, and my quest hooks are also generally pretty okay.

There’s some pretty big weaknesses too, of course. I’m not very good at gonzo stuff – I can’t help but try and ground my stuff to the ‘real world’ or lived experience or frame of reference, which I find a bit of a shame.

And then there’s dungeons. Over the years, I’ve tried many (many many) times to write something that I’d be happy enough with to actually share. I’ve started megadungeons, 5-room-dungeons, 10-room-dungeons, 30-minute-dungeons, and I’d have a lovely few days of tinkering away at things, but I’d never quite stick the landing.

So, with the AdventUre Calendar (and its philosophy of “just make something”) looming, I decided to give it one more go.

I had read Marcia B’s Bite-Sized Dungeons before, and where I perhaps once saw those as “Pfah, only 6 rooms, where’s the ambition in that?”, I figured now that starting with 6 rooms would actually be a perfect scope.

And lo and behold, after a week of starting dungeons and not finishing them, I now had a really cool framework for 6 rooms within 30 minutes.

After about 3, 4 hours of work I had a solid core text, and I finally got the courage to try a first few simple steps in Affinity Publisher, and I made a few hand-drawn illustrations and I found a few really cool copyright-free images to enhance the whole package.

So no, I did not whip up a simple dungeon in 30 minutes, and maybe that’s never the type of creator I’ll be. I like making really cool things and making them really slick, and that’s ok with me.

So yeah, go check out my dungeon!