Following up yesterday’s post with a post about how I intend to populate the megadungeon I’m building for my Monday group.
Goals
Advancing/Retreating Factions
I want the dungeon to feel like the factions shift and fade throughout the dungeon, and so I intend to designate two factions as “advancing” and “retreating” to indicate how frequently they appear at any given level.
Due to the logical flow (dungeon below an Abbey), the Priests/Order of Saint Ciorstan will be Advancing for the first three levels and the Otherworldly faction will be retreating. That will be inverted with the last three levels. Throughout that, the Viking faction of raiders will remain constant in their position.
Weirdly Logical
I want the progress through the dungeon to feel like a descent into surreal madness, as the Well at the bottom warps and changes things.
To that end, I’m creating a few enemy modifiers that that will be rolled (X out of 20, where X is the dungeon level) to modify various creatures.
- Prophetic: This creature has drank from the Well and now has the powers of wisdom and prophecy. The deeper you go into the dungeon the more likely this option becomes. I will likely represent this via rerolls/reactions in combat to show foresight, as well as planning and roleplay. In game, I’m calling this “Norn-Sight”.
- Warped: a creature who has been tainted by the corrupting influence that’s causing the dungeon delve to occur (the result of the “Otherworldly bit, that I’m leaving vague). I have there ideas for this: “warp-spasm/battle rage”, a la Irish myths of Cú Chulainn; World-Tree-Warp, where a being becomes a living extension of one of the roots of the World Tree; and [SECRET], which is [SECRET].
I also intend to use a series of prompt/theme tables to design rooms and their feels.
The tables! Here are some (not all) of the tables I made. My goal is to get the first level done before game in a week, and then do five rooms a day til the dungeon is done. I followed some of Nick LS Whelan’s ideas (notably a modification of “2 is always a dragon, 12 is always a wizard”).
Most of the enemies are drawn from the Mythic North list of enemies, and selected due to their thematic fit with my intent. No reason to recreate the wheel here. If I was writing this for a different system, I’d use a different list likely.
The idea is to roll on the 2d6 table, and then move on to the remainder of the tables based on what you roull.
Tables
| 2d6 Roll | Occupant |
| 2 | Warped Monster (1d3 for warp effect) |
| 3 | [Retreating Faction Table] |
| 4 | [Retreating Faction Table] |
| 5 | [Advancing Faction Table] |
| 6 | [Advancing Faction Table] |
| 7 | [Common Table] |
| 8 | [Advancing Faction Table] |
| 9 | [Common Table] |
| 10 | Viking Raiders |
| 11 | [Common Table] |
| 12 | Sage and Wizard |
| Advancing Faction Result | Priests of the Order | Otherworldly |
| 5 | Lost novices and initates | [Redacted] |
| 6 | Heretical Sect conducting a ritual. 1-in-6 chance of a demon | [Redacted] |
| 8 | Bound Knight (use Knight Errant) and 1d3 priests | [Redacted] |
- A bound knight is a knight in service to this order. there’s a dungeon level-in-10 chance that the knight and attendant priests are heretical
- There is a 1-in-6 chance that the lost novices and initiates are actually a ploy or trap.
| Retreating Faction Result | Priests of the Order | Otherworldly |
| 3 | Hieromonk (high ranking member of the Order) | [Redacted] |
| 4 | Abbot Paedrag Kellerhorn (NPC) | [Redacted] |
| Common Table | Result |
| 7 | Mundane Folk |
| 9 | Monster |
| 11 | 50/50 |
| Mundane Folk | |
| 1 | Lost Child |
| 2 | Beggars |
| 3 | Heretic Pilgrims |
| 4 | Escaped Prisoners |
| 5 | Bandits |
| 6 | Exiled Druid |
| Monsters/Foes | |
| 1 | Animated Statue |
| 2 | Wandering Ghost |
| 3 | Possessed Animal |
| 4 | Haunted Tree |
| 5 | Evicted Nature Spirit |
| 6 | Escaped Dream |
| d20 | Encounter Twist |
| 1 | Fleeing |
| 2 | Questing |
| 3 | Hunting |
| 4 | Conducting a ritual |
| 5 | Hiding |
| 6 | Maddened by |
| 7 | Twisting |
| 8 | Guarding |
| 9 | Betraying |
| 10 | Slaying |
| 11 | Opening |
| 12 | Supporting |
| 13 | Securing |
| 14 | Interpeting |
| 15 | Recording |
| 16 | Undermining |
| 17 | Seeking |
| 18 | Eating |
| 19 | Obsessed |
| 20 | Possessed |
My next steps will be defining the key elements (campaign items and level bosses) for the top four levels (I won’t be posting the bottom six), as well as building reward/treasure/room item tables.
Alongside those, I’ll try to refine and further define the key NPCs, and try to establish a few hooks to get the players in, as well as define why the megadungeon requires *these* adventurers to deal with it, and why they don’t just walk away.
Alan Bahr 