Saturday 13 February 2021

The Poem Dungeons Revealed

 Honestly I kinda forgot you guys existed.


Richard Tennant Cooper
(thanks to Monster Brains)


But behold! Some people actually responded to my post, and literally everyone who did a dungeon managed to produce something closer to my stated intent than I did.

(And thanks of course to Dyson Logos, whose map was the basis of the challenge.)

I shall link them in the order of their comments.


(No, as of 04.03.2021 they are still coming in so I will link them in reverse order so the newest one is always at the top.



Ablution


By Matthew Schmeer of RenderedPress. Our boy did an actual poem! And it looks like if you read it to the end and took notes it might even be near playable!



Shelter 15


An adventure for Death is the New Pink (now on sale) or Into the Odd. Vagabundork (Chaos Magick-User) from the blog Chaos Magic User brings us our second (I think) nuclear bunker quasi cold-war interpretation. This one with a slightly different political slant than the last;

"The booklet “The March of the Pigs”. It takes 1 day to read. Once per adventure, you can create 1d4+1 Molotov bombs using improvised materials (1d6 damage per roud to all inside the area; one extra point of damage to cops, sheriffs, soldiers, politicians and other enemies of freedom)."



THE TOMB OF BENDAN FAZIER 

The oldest of the Old-School, JB from BX Blackrazor bestows upon us this. Terse, minimal, classical materials. Do you need a lot of fancy bullshit to run an adventure? This dungeon says NO.



The Tower of the Red Dome


That's not what its actually called (I don't think it has a title), but your boi James Maliszewski of the blog Grognardia, has produced an ultra-minimal dungeon for the famous, and by many, considered quite difficult to access, world of Tékumel. He applied himself to the challenge of describing every element in no more than three lines.



The Undercellars


A lovely gothic and highly playable dungeon by Joseph Manola of 'Against the Wicked City'.

Not just the only creator brave enough to put a sex-cult in his dungeon but also an excellent 'forensic' dungeon (you can re-build the final events of the doomed cult) which rewards historical investigation, an elegant balance of investigatory and deceptive alternate methods with trad dungeon bashing and also something which, with ne or two tweaks, could be easily integrated into anything from a historical setting to a classic D&D world. Also an excellent example of clarity, brevity and prioritisation in text description making something very playable.



Terpsichorean Sodality of the Bird People


Brought to us by long-time commenter Solomon VK from World-Building and Wool-Gathering

"Monedulus Alleline, a man with the head of a jackdaw, paces nervously.. If surprised he will jump. He may be reciting prayers. He will give a cold welcome to newcomers. He is deeply worried about the coming rites, and dreads Vansittart's proposed alterations."

Nice.



Degenerates Art


We got another long one boys, this one from Louis Morris. 

"Please find attached my attempt at the Dungeon Poem Challenge. Not only is it much too late, I've also managed to ignore pretty much every element of the briefing except the map and possibly the word 'art' in 'artpunk'. That means it's comically long, not especially poetic, and probably not very functional either; it's meant to be system-agnostic, though it only really makes sense in a setting that's close to 20th/21st-century Earth. Given all this, you should obviously feel no obligation to mention it on the blog, though if you did want to put a link in a small addendum to the last post then that would be fine by me. I enjoyed making it anyhow!"

Don't worry Louis, ignoring pretty much all the instructions of the challenge is the norm here.

Likelihood of this being Kent in disguise? I'd say 1 in 6.


All 5's and 7's


Dan Sumpton of Peakrill actually did a poem! Its all haiku!





The Vulnerary House


Nick of Daayan Songs Translated brings us The Vulnerary House in both blog post and PDF form.

"- Who else? 1-a noblewoman begs her son to come with her. His gaze is unfocused. 2-a pregnant wife kneels at the feet of an old man who tousles her hair, gentle, yet absent 3-A boy hands an enthusiastically fashioned, yet crudely painted toy boat to a distant seeming man. The man weighs it momentarily, before pressing it back in the boy’s hands . 4-A woman, expressionless, head shaven, kisses a crying infant. She gifts the wailing swaddling to an old woman who nods and leaves, cooing to the child."



Party Cove


Your boy Peter Webb didn't use the right map but sent me this and I'm putting it up because I like him.



SkyChasm


Holy fucking fuck. Her Christmas Knight, the guy who writes extended comments on my blog longer than the posts themselves, brings us a precis of the ideas from some kind of epic Jack Vance/Gene Wolfe collaboration. Heaving with concepts and blistering on the boundary of glorious but terrifying near-unplayability (or is it?) this truly fucks the frame of the concept of 'Artpunk', whatever the fuck that currently means. 



The Great Ghoul Market


From your boy right here. Massively overwritten. Arguably not that artpunk. Did I even do an encounter table? Kinda. At least its a PDF. Patrick should try to remember his own concept next time.



The Court of Hell


Enthusiastic Skeleton Boys brings us 'The Court of Hell'. Down to two pages! Original concept! An image post and some actual illustrations! Another good contender.



The Song of Snow and Sun

Zzarchov! Our Lost God King turns in his mist-wreathed bed of tattered finery and from his battle-scarred fingers drifts 'The Song of Snow and Sun'. Its two dungeons in one! He did a PDF! He put a song in it!

“for any peasant girl,
lonely in the mortal world
Take the twilight ship to elsewhere
for any noble boy,
born and raised a castellan
take the twilight ship to elsewhere
the bard amidst the burning hall
the smell of wine, the siren’s call
a devilish grin, to rule the night
they march on and on, and on, and on”

The winner? Possibly.....

(I will not be announcing a winner but you can pick one yourselves if you like.)



Generic Laboratory

From 'Coins and Scrolls'. Finally you have a chance to join the Skerples train.



The Manteion

'I Don't Remember that Move brings us MASKS! You know its artpunk if there are needless masks. "skinless pink things like cave salamanders stir in the oily water. They attack if you try to help him." As true today as it was yesterday.



A Peer Beyond the Alchemical Aleph Null 

From the blog 'Foreign Planets' a dark-alchemy inspired dungeon in two versions. A 'Light' version for easy usability and a 'Dark' version for maximum pretension.




Clavicarcerum of the Scribe Jamesus

From the blog 'Whose Measure God Could Not Take, the Magma-Marred Clavicarcerum of the Scribe Jamesus. Ahh I remember when I could crank out mysterious stuff. Feels like a long time ago. He even has ferric snail in his.



Ice Troll Moon Abbey 

From the blog Lapidary Ossuary. A classic one-page dungeon.





If you want to read some dungeons, read through, and if you like something, talk about it here or somewhere else. (Also people can keep submitting....)

30 comments:

  1. I am unreasonably proud of myself for figuring out the song in Zzarchov's is probably meant to be sung to the tune of "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey. For that reason alone, it will probably get my vote, but I'll withhold it until I actually read them all.

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    1. Holy shit I totally missed that on first read. That makes it even funnier to foist on your players to see if any realize that.

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  2. I'm over the moon, thank you very much. A lot of what I've learned about what to prioritize during the creative process has been from your blog and books. I read the Ghoul Market, as well; very good concept of introducing this list of wild NPCs and then revealing that some of them will be chosen to be intimately involved with the story. Creates the space for them all to interact in more novel ways than would be reasonable to write out ahead of time.
    "A Verdigris-stained Gondola with skeletal Gondoliers wrapped in the flags of lost empires." I loved the docks. Made me think that God willing GW will someday give CA permission to make Man O' War and Dreadfleet into a full naval wargame with all factions. I will crush the world in my chaos dwarf mechakraken.
    The curse exchange is very interesting. The king of decay piece is great. Very fucking cool market. The bone key man is a great element too

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  3. Hope you don't mind if I post a link to my entry, The Vulneary House on this page, since I cleared a couple of typos and added six words that were probably necessary.

    PDF here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CmeqMUwtbj802i7d0m4433kBS4VgvmOO/view?usp=sharing

    Blog Entry: https://daayansongstranslated.blogspot.com/2021/02/false-machine-dungeon-poetry.html

    Sorry to be presumptuous, but Mercury is in retrograde after all...

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  4. Regarding the other pieces, I already stated how much fun Her Christmas Knight's Sky Chasm was to read. But truth be told, I learned something from each entry, each one had something that made me say to myself 'I wish I'd thought of that'.

    I'll post my favourite parts out of each one a little later (I think that's the fairest way of going about discussion). I appreciated having a reason to re-stir my feeble RPG blog after a couple of lazy years.

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    1. My read on 'Skychasm'

      What can I even say about this? My handwritten notes on my printout of this one look like the wall of crazy connections from a conspiracy movie. (Though all my writing looks like that somewhat).

      So, for sheer volume, originality, insensity and strageness of ideas this may be the winner.

      All the details are there for a dungeon, the cast list alone, Chasemites, The Affidavit Tribe, Hierodules, Grimlocks, Conchguard, Ley Lords etc, are enough for a module. The Implied world-building from the objects, descriptions and TWO (there pobably should have been more) Appendicies, is enough for an entire reailty or timeline. The whole thing is delivered in a breathless maniacal speed and rythm which only adds to the pleasure of reading it.

      Its probably not playable in its current format but all the information is there to make it playable. Markers would not be enough you would need to copy-paste and re-order the writing.

      Its an insane and glorious explosion of ideas and is still arguably, tecnichnically, playable. Dare you enter this magical realm? Very very "artpunk", whatever that means.

      Delete
    2. Your interest and encouragement have been greatly heartening. I've actually done two more since Skychasm, and I really hope you get a chance to read em at some point because they're in a similar vein and the same conceptual universe as Skychasm

      Silicasilk:
      https://grandcommodore.blogspot.com/2021/03/artpunk-adventure-silicasilk.html

      The Gardens of Anomie:
      https://grandcommodore.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-gardens-of-anomie-artpunk-dungeon.html

      I hope that your responses here have contained all your notes because I am extremely curious about the wall of crazy connections

      Delete
  5. Ice Troll Moon Abbey: I like little fish men under ice. I like eating troll food and turning into a troll. Also immediately useable, no fucking about/sticks to brief.

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    1. (my review;)

      Know what this is a pretty fucking solid adventure.

      Not pretentious at all and low on the pure originality scale, which puts it near the bottom when we come to the smirking wine-glass swilling AESTHETES ranking.

      However;

      Is, how can I put this, very lucid. Every room is minimal but the information which is there is adventure-relevant, precise and has a strong matrix of communicability, adventure utility and simplicity of concept and mutual imagination.

      "- A leap from here may break the ice.
      - Bitterly cold winds blow through the crevasse.
      - Moonlight shines in from above.

      'Was it night when we entered these ruins?'"

      (It probably wasn't.)

      That's pretty good for a bridge and in terms of play I would say stands up to 90% of the bride sections we have had so far. Also the shift from outside time to moonlight in the crevasse is an elegant way of showing a slip into the mythic underworld.

      The only monsters are a Panther and some Ice Trolls. Here's the description for the trolls;

      "Ice Trolls: the sound of their ambulation is creaking ice; their voices are snow crunching beneath boots; their gaze is an gust of icy wind that cuts to the heart of any warmblodod." (sic)

      What more do you need to know? Here are the things you find Ice Trolls doing in the adventure;

      ".. a solitary Ice Troll is pruning the hoarfrost from the far statue."
      ".. Three large Ice Trolls are paking stone chips into snowballs."
      ".. Two Ice Trolls have pried open a tomb, they are feasting on dusty bones."

      There is so little information in this adventure but almost none of it is wasted. Despite it's somewhat gauche-seeming initial impression I am glad I devoted more attention to it. It's far from perfect, (no random encounter chart. Same issues with text priorotisation as wil pretty much every adventure. Misspellings etc) but I found it rewarded a deeper reading into how it would actually work in play because it solves or avoids many problems of more complex adventures.

      Graceful is another word that comes to mind, not from the initial read but from a more holistic appreciation of its contents.

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  6. 'A Peer Beyond the Alchemical Aleph Null' has that "wealth wreathed in carcinogens", which is always sweet. Two versions is basically a really neat way of giving you the descriptive bit and the mechanical bit in a two page minimalist format.

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    1. Thanks Nick. I quite like the 2 documents - 1 dungeon approach now, it was an interesting byproduct of my being defeated by the one-page format. I'm hoping to expand the dungeon concept into something larger at some point in the future - I feel so much more can be done with 'horror-alchemy'.

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  7. The Magma-Marred Clavicarcerum of the Scribe Jamesus: the sense of something taking place that doesn't care if you grasp it or not. It's happening. A lot of info in a small space. A definite brief beast.

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  8. I'm reading quite a few religious sites in the above - myself included. Perhaps there's something about the regularity of the rooms that suggests a planned community like a monastery. Skychasm (by nature of being on a mountaintop) sort of bypasses that - one couldn't build in a given spot, because that is sheer rock face. Degenerates' Art has the planned community angle, but is thoroughly secular.

    I suppose my personal challenge is to posit my next dungeon as being thoroughly strange and intricate without leaning too hard on magic or religion. Time to change up my reading.....

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  9. Skerples Train has been delayed. Please enjoy the Skerples Rail Replacement Bus Service.

    Anyway, all these dungeons are excellent.

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  10. The Song of Snow and Sun

    The time-locks on visiting are good.

    After review, the song is slightly depressing and singing it strongly embeds that idea that this will be a gygaxian 'cheese' dungeon, which is not really whoelly true.

    The dual wandering monster table and its interactions with the rules is a masterwork of brevity and utility.

    The whole dungeon has a really strong and efficient grasp on dimensions and utility. It feels like it would be unlikely that you need some detail of space or mass and not be able to find it.

    There is a wide spread of gygaxian dickishness which may or may not be fun or interesting depending on the awareness and desire of the Players. Some, like the consistently Lateral treasure where you have to grab the not-tresure stuff, feels reasonable, but I don't really like the meta-gaming or context-free puzzle logic of some of the other random rolls regarding statues, etc. This is very Gygaxian and I don't think I would enjoy playing those parts myself.

    One other negative is the prevelenace of +2 bonuses and number boosts from treasure and choices.

    So I don't necessarily love Zzarchovs problem-logic.

    However, he has a very strong grasp on the essentials of space and adventuring, the counterpoint of different effects and the utilisation of space, challenge and opportunity to create a complex but interesting flow of promlem-solution-problem which feels like it could provoke very lateral and creatie solutions and accept the results without breaking.

    And the dual-season concept and how it plays out if you reach "the end" is beautiful in concept and execution.

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  11. The Terpsichorian Sodality of the Bird-People

    SET ENGLISHNESS TO MAXIMUM

    ENGAGE TEA-DRIVE

    HOWS THE WEATHER RECENTLYYYYYYYYYY


    This is based around a rite, or something like a mystery play performed by bird people. Its fucking cool. I have no idea how you would run it. If 'The Undercellars' was Jospeh Manola doing a gothic horror which is also a functional dungeon, this is Solomon VK doing .. like.. wind in the willows, plus drawing room drama, plus edgy 1930's 'symbolic' theatre, plus mystery play? But its also a dungeon, at least nearly? I can imagine Viginia Wolfe reviewing this.

    Honestly if you dungeon-bash this one you are missing out on almost everything that's good about it. It really sings as a bunch of very particular, very Englishy, social encounters between a wide cast and with complex inter-dynamics and some neat and particular social world observations.

    Here are all the foods and drinks I highlighted in the dungeon, black tea laced with rum, smoked eel fillets, patter of marinated herriing, thin white wine laced with rowanberry schnapps, a large pink gin, a cup shaped like a dragon.

    So you gotta play it as a social/investiagtion adventure really.

    There are adventure seeds. They are of the same tone; "A vinter has sent you to them with the matter of an unpaid bill." - yes the awkwardn social agony of trying to reclaim a minor debt.

    The central 'Rite' 12 NPCs of various factions and beliefs playing 12 rite characters in some sort of play.

    That's a big challenge.

    (Also the PCs should be able/required to (covertly) dress up as and replace the 'characters' in the Rite. You can't have a D&D adventure with masks and costumes and not have Pcs wear them as disguises.

    (Also there is not enough dancing, Terpsichore was the muse of dance I think?)

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    1. I'm on my second cup of Assam, and can confirm that the above is all basically true. (Some of the Bird-People have Scots surnames, this is not an impediment to them being VERY ENGLISH)

      The greatest trap in the Sodality is the possibility of being tight as an owl by three in the afternoon.

      The figures of the Rite all have guides to their movement which are probably not dance-y enough to actually communicate the idea of the Rite being (principally?) danced.

      Any actual content the Rite contains could probably be improvised by opening a TS Eliot anthology at random.

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  12. I almost did haiku...I’m glad I didn’t! Sumpton’s submission was great (and made me snicker out loud).

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    1. Okay...a couple haiku, but still not on Sumpton's level.

      Am I really "the oldest of the Old-School?" Wow.

      Delete
  13. Degenerates Art

    I can't work out if this is Kent or not. On the one hand it came through a Gmail from an unknown individual with no major web presence and has a lot of themes about the awfulness of communism and the degraded thralls of a fallen dictator hoarding and battling over his collected art.

    On the other hand, it doesn't have any of Kents more notable tics in it, and usually he has trouble repressing those.

    If this IS Kent, its well done..

    Anyway, this one probably rivals 'Skychasm' for its presentation of an entire world and the novelty of its concept. Dungeon re-imagined as a decayed post-soviet style bunker full of the inbred servants of a dictator of a fallen nation who retreated here using his stolen art collection as a kind of hostage.

    Its the only one I have read in depth so far which is fully modern, as in, almost certainly meant to be set in our current world (instead of that only being an option). Veers between horror, satire and adventure/heist. A mixture of an 80s bond film and 1984, or some semi magical-realist Ismail Kadare novel maybe with a dictator holed up in a bunker with their art going crazy. Or maybe the equilent of a Bond film shot by a deranged Yugoslavian director in an aircarft hanger.

    Its really swarming with fascinating and innovative detail and conception. Plus its largely playable. Other than some of the concept-prioritisation its one of the most playable of the highly-pretentious adventures.

    Top five all over? Probably in the top three for the more pretentions less-standard adventures.

    If you like originality, strangeness and .. well, whatever 'Artpunk' is, give this a look at the links in the post above.

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    1. Thanks for the feedback! I'm not Kent and this is actually my first stab at writing DM material, so I'm glad it went down ok. I have now embraced the mission creep and turned it into a minigame with super-simple classes (Collector, Heist Mastermind, Muse, etc) and a bit of extra content (more varied Goon encounters! A table of Agrippina's dreadful art! Sinister out-of-context quotes from real artists!) to iron out the wrinkles, which I'll probably run as a one-shot with my gaming group at some point. I really enjoyed reading everyone else's entries too.

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  14. It's interesting how Degenerates' Art, the other post-apocalyptic-like dugeon, contains a painting called "The Madonna of the Abyss" because my dungeon was inspired by a short story I wrote called "The Madonna of the Dunes", about a man living in the desert of post-apocalyptic Mexico City; I wanted to use each chapter title as the name of each room because the titles form a poem (a triffle poem, but a poem nonetheless), but I could not come up with anything interesting and the number of rooms and titles is different. In the end, I only kept the post-apocalyptic aesthetic.

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  15. The Vulernary House

    HIGH GOTHIC BABY - Its a creepy temple/market on the waters of lethe! Where silent, slightly victorian creeps and victims go to be creeped on by the creepiest creeps of all!

    Pretension levels - "Six Veils Ones beat ivory and ebony tabula (150gp), dholak (60gp), khol (40gp), thavil (100gp), gold bell (70gp) and tambourine (10gp)."

    2 in 6 The High Forgetter, beneath a white cowl, his mirror mask returns your own gaze."

    We got named obscure instruments, we got veils ones plus mirror masks, we got a lot. This is truly High Artpunk and it gets even more so towards the end. Maybe not up to Skychasm levels of pretension but in the top band.


    Playability - disappointingly playable. There are some hidden situations with elements buried in the text but a read through and a few minutes wit a highlighter and you could run this one as-is. Is this what the movement has come to??? Playable adventures??? Hang your head in shame.


    General Design - 'story' is hidden in the contxt of the dungeon so you need to read it through to understand. I do this too. Should I be doing this? Honestly I go back and forth on this one all the time.

    The opening presents difficult possibilities for subtle incursion and getting in through deception, originally I thought that would likely be ovewhelmed by a vilent response if the PCs had little context for what they were going to encounter, but after reading it through I think the distance between groups, presence of handy NPCs to "interview" or persuade and the fact that the waters of lethe are just hanging around solves this problem, if you consider it a problem.

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  16. I finally got around to cobbling something together. It stinks, but here it is:
    https://rendedpress.blogspot.com/2021/11/ablution-dungeon-poem.html

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