This is the sixth and final (long-delayed) post in my series documenting my full dungeon-writing process. I have had a lot of fun writing the Slime Baroness and the Lady of Unterbranch Keep, and I hope my intentional reflection has been as insightful to read as it has been to write.
Check out all the all the other posts in the series here.
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| Cover page of my dungeon: Slime Baroness and the Lady of Unterbranch Keep |
Slime Baroness and the Lady of Unterbranch Keep
Link to the full PDF of the dungeon.
Revisions
Checklist for my final pass:
- Spell check and proofing
- Check treasure values and locations
- Finalize maps (page numbers & room highlighting)
- Add page numbers to all room references
- Print test (B&W and colour)
Final Layout
Now that all content has been finalized and proofed, I could go back and update the maps with highlighting and page numbers. This was very satisfying to finally see come together. With 60 rooms, I'm almost certain I've probably made an error in there somewhere that I won't catch until I run the dungeon.
Reflections
This process of intentional dungeon design and documenting my thoughts along the way has been very fun—and enlightening.
Even though this final post has been delayed by almost two months, I am still very excited about this dungeon. I really hope to run it for some players soon. I'm happy with the way the maps turned out and the way everything fits together. I believe that there are some cool ideas buried here, but the whole thing is maybe not the best content I've ever written. A haunted keep isn't too innovative. Which is fine, since I was very focused on the layout, maps, and process for this dungeon. Even if the final product is something mediocre, the lessons learned have been invaluable.
Once I work out any kinks with this map and layout style through playtesting, I believe it will be very successful. It was loads of fun to really take a step back and work out a way to set up a dungeon geared towards running at the table. I hope to replicate this for future dungeons.
The spark tables idea for generating room contents was fun, but I'm not 100% satisfied with it. I will try something new next time. I think it got good results, but made me really zoom in on one room at a time instead of thinking at a bigger scale with interacting factions and contents.
The long break I had between this post and the last one let me sit on this whole project. I believe that I got bogged down with the combined work of actually making the dungeon AND writing about the process on the blog. The final revisions and post grew to be this huge task I kept procrastinating in favour of smaller and more manageable projects (Stay tuned for this years' One Page Dungeon Contest entry...).
I hope to return to this series in the future with a new post once I've run this dungeon. If I have any edits after that I may polish it up more and release on my itch.io page.
Thanks so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed!
The Series
Check out the other parts of this series here.
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