#@dungeoncraft

[jeffs-gamebox]

TTRPG YouTuber Attacks Successful OSR Kickstarter.

An article regarding CW Chanter and his video bashing on Shadowdark and my friends at the Arcane Library. Not cool. The TTRPG community is a place for kindness and supporting one another. The only blue space chicken here is in someone's Starfinder game.

This incident happened a little over a month ago and just recently came to my attention. I’m pretty cheesed off about this one. I just listened to an almost two hour diatribe on why Shadowdark RPG is supposedly some kind of scam or conspiracy by Wizards of the Coast and some other well known TTRPG YouTubers. Now, the guy dropping this “review” is a well known debunker and celebrity over in the…

[justavulcan]

Seedworld Robotics Facility Compilation Post

Specialized power systems are uncommon throughout human space- typically, being able to interface without adapters is the way most prefer to build, to capitalize on familiarity across markets.  It’s this exact feature that makes the Seedworlds so bizarre.  The untapped raw energy they burst with is too much for conventional power systems to handle and requires specialized equipment to collect, transfer, and use.  As a result they’re something of an energy desert for outside or poorly-adapted hardware.

The Seedworlds are littered with the remnants of prefabbed structures that weren’t built to spec, part of the earliest and most ill-conceived waves of colonization.  The Dungeon is one such structure, a civic robotics factory where the internal circuitry burnt out en masse the first time the production lines were activated.  Still gorgeous and pristine as the day it landed, the Dungeon now plays home to an unorthodox group of locals and colonists alike.

The Master of the Dungeon is the first and only attempt from the Dungeon’s previous life as a prefabbed robotics facility to adjust the machinery to the Seedworld’s native power field.  Visually, it’s monstrous, a chimeric centipede-like construct built using the torsos and limbs of humanoid chassis as raw materials.  Running some kind of security protocols and later equipped with an array of military-grade weaponry, the Master denies access to the structure to most who try, although the odd passerby occasionally meets some hidden criteria for passage and is allowed entry.

The most populous of the Master’s ‘followers’ are cyborgs, mostly explorers and other wilderness types familiar with roaming alien landscapes.  They’ve adopted the role of the emissary since being permitted by the Master to make their home inside the Dungeon, and have adapted themselves admirably to the Seedworld’s power oddities.  Armed with engraving tools and industrial welding equipment, they’ve taken to scribing warnings and messages about the Master’s domain far and wide, inviting supplicants to test themselves and see if the Master finds them worthy.

Perhaps the only one who truly means the best for the Master is a unique robot with a caretaker and repair toolset.  Nearly self-aware due to a complicated interconnected set of systems, it looks after the Master’s repair and upgrade cycles like a concerned teacher would a challenging student.  Its programming has extended to upgrading and repairing the vehicles and equipment the Dungeon’s other occupants bring, nursemaiding their inorganic components and their gear alike.

Newcomers to the Dungeon find that the Master is more than its biggest and most fearsome defender- it is the keystone to the facility’s defense network, a channel through which the other occupants feed each other information and, critically, a free access point for the local power source.  As a result, the Dungeon’s defenders can draw on this network to fuel enhanced shielding or overcharged weaponry as long as the Master is still functional.

Since the Dungeon was dropped, colonization on the Seedworlds has proceeded quickly- and the demand for the facility’s services has increased exponentially.  Since the cost to retrofit the factory is less than the cost of prefabbing and dropping another, or even that of manufacturing another on-planet, there have been interests in reclaiming the Dungeon for its intended use.  Removing the Master and its followers is all that remains, and the facility can be claimed by the most eager of its would-be new owners.

[sleightedge]

Snakes on a Planescape (PS-DC-CEG-02)

If anyone is looking for a level 20 dnd onesshot, my husband and I just released this! We had a lot of fun writing it 😁 🐍

The Fraternity of Order needs your help to prevent a snake-astrophe in Sigil! Citizens in the City of Doors have been sprouting scales, fangs, even serpent tails, and the problem is only getting worse. The curse seems to originate in the sewers beneath the Ditch, but the first team sent to investigate hasn’t returned. Can you rescue them and prevent the coming snake-pocalypse?

Snakes on a Planescape is a dungeon crawl romp filled with action, role play, and more snake memes than is medically advisable!

[tabletop-thoughts]

Showcasing My Ultimate Dungeon Terrain Collection

04/11/2025 Happy Friday and welcome back to Tabletop Thoughts! Today, I released another video on my YouTube channel. In this video, I show you my UDT (Ultimate Dungeon Terrain) collection I have created over the years. The idea for UDT came from Professor Dungeonmaster on the Dungeoncraft YouTube channel. Here are a couple of samples from the video: I also show you some of the custom scatter…

[justina-revolution]

My favorite 5e Homebrew rule

[curtvilescomic]

Will the Next Be the LAST Edition of D&D?! (Ep 335)

[brinefathomcaves]

What's Next for Brinefathom Caves

Happy new year, me hearties!

2024 is over, and Brinefathom Caves is done...ish. The content is there, but it's not really playable in its current state, both because the information is scattered across 366+ Tumblr posts and because I deliberately avoided putting hard stats on anything to avoid getting bogged down. My goal for 2025 is to edit this beast into a playable state, with eventual (e)publication in mind. The finished project will be PWYW--it's nice if someone wants to kick a couple bucks my way, but I'd rather get played than get paid, y'know?

As a proof of concept for this, I've rewritten all the level 1 rooms to a more user-friendly format with stated DCs for checks and saves. Below is a link to a Mega folder with the resulting PDF. It's still very much a work in progress--I haven't done an editing pass beyond spellcheck, for instance.

→ → GET LEVEL 1 HERE ← ←

The list of specific things I want to do this year include:

Rewrite the rest of the dungeon rooms in this format

Create clean digital copies of all maps

Write faction and NPC information for levels 2-6

Expand the minidungeons in the level 4 wavecrawl with playable rooms

Create a small hexcrawl for the surface of the island

Detail the island's port town and some NPCs who live there

Create stats for unique monsters and NPCs

Write procedures for the megadungeon play elements that 5e lacks, like dungeon turns

Probably some other stuff I haven't even thought of yet

So that's, uh, a lot! We'll see how my work ethic holds up without the day-to-day pace of dungeon24, but finishing made me pretty confident in my ability to handle the kind of workload that comes with a large dungeon.

One thing I'm not sure I'll do is go back and do full-map roundups of the lower levels. I really fell off doing that at some point, sorry. Right now, I want to move forward trying to get everything shipshape for publishing rather than spend time on more intermediate content. However, if anyone really missed having those roundups, please let me know. If there's demand for it, I'll happily do the extra work.

If anybody uses material from Brinefathom (especially from the PDF above, but also just in general), I'd love to hear your feedback! I lack the time and resources to playtest a megadungeon, so while I'm doing my best in editing--I swear past me forgot the difference between 4e and 5e encounter balance half the time--having outside perspectives is a huge help.

Finally, thanks again to everyone who followed along for the past year of dungeoncraft. Whether you started reading in January or December, you all made doing this so much more rewarding.

[blacktowbarony]

d100 Spells, Part 1: Dungeoncraft

I wrote 100 spells for my The Black Hack hack I was using before I switched to Knave. I moved away from writing my own system because I was spending much too much time worrying about balance and game experience in between sessions, when I SHOULD have been thinking about fun things like magic items and characters.

I'm proud of this spell list I made though. I may rewrite it at some point, or adapt it to Knave.

But for now, keep these spellcasting definitions in mind:

L - The level of the casting wizard.

Duration - If not specified by the spell, L × 10 minutes. The caster may end the effects earlier if they chose.

Range - If not specified, 30 ft.

Damage - Any damage dealt by spells is L + exploding d6. (Exploding: If the roll is a 6, keep rolling additional d6’s until a 6 is not rolled.)

I subdivided my spells into 10 categories. I did this so that I could quickly theme magical NPCs, monsters, and religions by limiting them to one or two schools of magic.

The first 10 are the bread-and-butter spells of OSR dungeoncrawling. Iconic spells of the genre that would really be a shame to exclude. Having these also increases compatibility with modules that use some version of D&D as a system.

Dungeoncraft

Popular and practical spells, considered classics by adventuring wizards and magical thieves.

Knock - Unlocks a lock with a loud sound. Roll d20  -L for volume, 5 is as loud as normal speech.

Web - You spray out thick webbing.

Sleep - A group of targets of total level no more than L falls asleep.

Comprehend - You become fluent in all languages.

Detect Magic - You hear nearby magical auras singing. Volume and pitch signify the aura's power.

Charm - The target treats you like a close friend for the duration.

Spider Climb - You can walk across vertical and upside-down surfaces.

Invisibility - Target turns invisible.

Polymorph - Nearby target turns into a mundane animal no bigger than L ft in any dimension. The health of the animal form is set by the DM (usually 1 per ft of its longest dimension). Once the animal form’s health reaches 0, the target reverts to its natural form, and excess damage is carried over to its natural health pool.

Dispel Magic - Test Wis to cancel a spell or magical effect, target is 10 + the original caster’s level. Cannot remove curses.

[dnalorthetroll]

Random events in a bay

I stumbled across Jon Haddok’s map yesterday on Facebook (yes, I still use the old people page, I AM old people!) in a fantasy map group, using Dungeoncraft with the Dungeon Mapster assets. The map doesn’t show much, just a small bay surrounded by cliffs with a small sandy beach. But that’s enough to get my head spinning. (C) Jon Haddock 2024. With the kind permission of the artist Encounters…

[jeffs-gamebox]

Orcs, Orks, or WotrCs?

Remember a time when Orcs were just green skinned, pig nosed bullies who were considered bad guys? That's okay if you don't. Wizards of the Coast can't either. Whose Orcs will come out on top?

This article has been coming for a while now. I’ve been thinking about this topic ever since Professor DM talked about it on Dungeoncraft a while back. Here’s what he was saying. I like Angry Dwarf’s recognition guide especially. Orcs have been in fantasy RPGs as far back as original Dungeons & Dragons. They were, of course, mostly ported over from the Lord of the Rings books. However, the…

[justavulcan]

Grove of the Mindbender's Rings 5

Although the Dungeon is isolated and the valley in which it lies toxic, there are still local people that come through now and again.  These traveling groups consider the Dungeon and valley part of their territory and believe themselves stewards over it- and while they have infinite patience for those lost or simply trying to survive in the wild, they can always tell when people have trespassed in the sacred chamber where the Dungeon’s treasure lies, and take such a trespass extremely personally.

[jodiesdicefarm]

[hyliandude]

I think Professor Dungeoncraft jumping ship is that one that speaks the most to me.

He was the one I thought would sink with WotC as the ship went down. He’s been playing CONSISTENTLY since first edition.

He’s been welcoming all kinds of players for years, not gatekeeping. And now he’s turning his back to the company. That’s insane to me.

Proud of his decision. Go check out his channel if you haven’t already for great content.

[tabletop-thoughts]

House Rules Summary and Updates

07/21/2023 It has been a while since I last put out some of my house rules. I have used some of them in my games and thought I would update the list with my thoughts on the House Rules. Ethos (Borrowed from Professor Dungeon Master at Dungeoncraft) Instead of just using Alignment, we will also be tracking Ethos. This is a scale that goes from +4 to -4. Doing good earns a +1 ethos point while…

[tyree403]

DungeonCraft Changeling Throne Room

Keep in mind, Dungeon Craft is still in beta. This is what I have so far for @ask-echo-and-marissa​