dungeon23 blog get

she steps out from the shadows

long time lurker i have been, a player of many games, a playtester throughout the years, former member of the gygaxian democracy on many an occasion, and hey i did co-edit a thing that one time. but something about the spirit of '23 has got my bones rattling, my fingers itching, and my slimy skullguts buzzing.

it has been told, as i have heard, that this anticipation of the new year brings to mind the heyday of our dearly departed G+, and having baled some of said hey back in said day, i am compelled to agree.

i cut my teeth on that platform and likely would not have made it through my short-lived career as a dairy farmer without the escapism provided by the creative exuberance that manifested toward the end of said platform's life.

enough has been said about that, though, it's been almost 5 years, an entire decade of discourse has passed, we need not dwell in demolished ruins.

i have opted to dwell in the bright and shiny new ruins to be made over the course of dungeon23

this is a logo i found

also i got a blog. this is my attempt at accountability. it may quickly perish, i have had blogs before, but a weekly update of my progress may not be too cumbersome to do, especially as i like the idea of sharing my work, and documenting it in some way.

i am not too vain as to think that my work will be notable, but i do have some ambitions; projects that i have spent too much time thinking of and too little time acting on. so to the blog, at the very least i stand a chance of capturing my conjurings rather than letting them slip away like so much sand between my ribs.

i am a mature professional now and my dog is dead, so i gotta have some sort of outlet else the base evil cruelty of working in united states healthcare industry take me down in all its crumbing. no, i will make a dungeon based upon skiing, a sport i have never participated in even once.

yes, skiing

my dungeon23

here is my proposal, or at least how i think i may go about the project. i have four major pieces of work i have been attempting to put together over the last few years, four seasonal adventure locations themed around the idea of vacation, leisure, that sort of thing denied to my impoverished ass.

of course this is a loose theme, if, for example, i am suddenly spurred in a new direction during this experiement, i will allow it. maybe i don't want to write about the beach some day come june, well fine, a farming dungeon it shall be, or something based upon my horrific experience teaching ceramics to children.

i want to hold loosely to everything that i do in this, else i am bound to fail. but without any further blathering, i shall introduce the four loose locales that i will be exploring.

as i am also primarily and exclusively interested in into the odd/electric bastionland, the entirety of what i will be posting will be marked by the odd and powered by bastionland electrical conglomerates. i think you will also find that the proposals i am putting forth are very appropriate for the setting.

 

i already made the front cover

law-o'-caspan and the fantofel recreation area

 this is the run-down old skiers' holiday town with cows, a giant lake, an insect wrestling league, a mountaintop observatory, and some sucrose flats. this was based on some early 20th century slovenian postcards by valentin hodnik depicting silly vacationers enjoying winter sports at lake bohinj in slovenia. it grew from that and it has become vaguely unwieldy, but i do have some distinct dungeonesque ideas that could use fleshing out and doing so a room-a-day this winter seems just the tick.

 

 

anyone up for a swim?

the ginsea shore and carcino bay

these two badboys are kind of similar summer destinations and they are likely to merge. the ginsea shore started as a borough for a bastionland one-shot that never happened and also a deeply personal love letter to my time going to the jersey shore while i was farming in pennsylvania. some beautiful times were had on new jersey beaches, despite the custard-nabbing gulls. i would also pull in favorite bits of going to the outer banks of north carolina that one time, sans the traumatic moment in which an arm was broken.

carcino bay is as of yet more abstract, but it came about while listening to my favorite floridian import, the punk band that saved my life in '06 and '08, and a few more times since then, against me! carcino bay is a direct reference to the depiction of the city named "miami" in their song, curiously also named "miami". that song and a lot of their album white crosses give a fair amount of fantastic imagery that lit up my day that one time walking to class.

 

 

rare sighting of jfur in the wild

i also like michigan, chris kutalik

okay, so this doesn't have a name because the perfect name has already been taken, so i need to think a lot about it. this is the springtime vacation location and it's based on my love of the state of michigan, and an incredible vacation i took there after my first year of grad school. even before that i had spent a lot of time in michigan, mostly visiting housing cooperatives in ann arbor and detroit. this is not super well-formed, but i do have a lot of ideas written on the back of a ferry ticket. flowers, cherries, ferries, and dunes will be the touchstone of this badboy. and more boardwalks, but different to the boardwalks from new ginsea

 

 

i also like edmund weiß, chris mcdowall

 the curse of slumberwood valley

before i was a farmer but after i had finished being a poet, but before i had wholly written off academia as a waste of time, i took the best literature class in my entire life and wrote the best piece of literary criticism in my entire life. also the last, for both. it was about gothic literature and fuck if that class didn't make me both learn to hate johnny truant and love washington irving. i will not be talking about the former here.

the curse of slumberwood valley is clearly just a rebranding of washington irving's scathing critique of capitalism. through dietrich knickerbocker, washington irving weaves together an incredible story about place, belonging, and a town triumphantly getting rid of some asshole who just wanted to do the 18th century version of putting a walmart in a small town.

i wanted to pay homage to this by making an adventure wherein the villain won and married katrina and destroyed the town in the process. this has a lot of potential and ideas, and it is the fall theme, but also has a bit of summer and winter in it for good measure. the primary locations are the port town of lingervale, the slumberwood itself, the ghost town since dubbed "crayne's folly", and the kaaterwaul mountains. i did a teaser a few years back for the 24XX jam which you can look at here.

 

this location has nothing to do with the rest

 good luck to me i guess, hope i can make the things. blog get achieved.