Here we are on day 5 of #Dungeon23 – and as suspected there have to be a thousand or more people working on these right now, so I expect this update to disappear into the ether for a while until the field starts to shrink a bit. I’m really hopeful that a large portion of the #Dungeon23 designers take the original mission statement to heart and stick to very short descriptions for each room – to maintain a daily output for a full year means making sure that you aren’t biting off too much. As it stands, the challenge itself should take up at most 5 minutes out of any particular day… but I’ve seen people putting out significantly more work than that and I sincerely hope they don’t burn themselves out.

For my own #Dungeon23 projects, I’ve now completed the maps of the January levels, and am currently caught up on the writing with 5 days of material for both so far.

Here’s a video of the map creation process for the January level of Dyson’s Delve II – the video is a 64x speed timelapse of the drawing process that actually spanned two of my cartography livestreams – drawn on the 28th of December and the 2nd of January.

And here’s where we stand on the actual stocking of the map, pretty boring so far (map references are below the stocking text)

1-1 The Gates
The doors of the gates are long gone but sounds can be heard from within the walls as scavengers dig through the ruins of the burned structure within. The walls are 16 feet tall and lack any form of battlements or similar, instead being rounded at the top to prevent grappling hooks and similar from finding purchase.

1-2 Courtyard & Ruins
Three toadfolk are scavenging through the burned-out ruins in the southeast. One has just found something and they are about to start fighting over it.

1-3 Corner Tower
The door to this space is ajar and two toadfolk are checking it out and will try to hide or climb to the tower roof if they hear violence in the courtyard.

1-4 Entrance Hall
Shatered massive door remains on the floor. East door is locked. Two more toadfolk are peering about in the darkness to find anything to salvage. If they hear others enter, they will try to hide in the archway of the west door and escape as soon as they can.

1-5 Long Tower
Accessible from outside through the fallen wall, and from above via the ladder. Four bandits are on this level watching for intruders and ready to scare off the toadfolk. Bandits in the tower above will come down if there is any extended commotion down here.

What are “toadfolk” you might ask? They might be actual toad-style humanoids (bullywugs, grippli, etc), or just the description given by the locals to the poorest of the human rag-pickers, camp-followers, gong-farmers, and base scavengers. “Oh look, Denis, there’s some lovely filth over here!”

Whatever they are, they are far too timid to take on a few adventurers in armour with decent-looking weapons.