Rails in the Ruins: Design Notes

I promised when I posted my one-page dungeon (actual dungeon here) that I would have more comment on it later.

Now is later.

The main thing I wanted to mention was where I got the idea. I actually rolled a couple times on Risus Monkey's Dungeonwords tables and a couple times on my 20-Sided Quickies tables to come up with some inspirational words. For example, the "infested" comes from Dungeonwords, the "vine dervish" comes from Quickies Table I; the ogres are goat-headed because I rolled the word "goat" on Table II for my main monster, but I didn't want plain-old goats as the primary menace.

As Mike Monaco noticed, I worked a little more on ecology and rationale for this dungeon, not to be "realistic", but to create interesting interactions. I'm not afraid of "illogical" random dungeon stocking, but I don't like monsters to just sit there in their rooms.

One of the benefits of this mapping project was discovering quick and easy ways of making twisty passages (all alike) in Inkscape. Turns out it works for ropes and vines as well, and even for railroad ties (though not as well.)

The treasures were rolled randomly using the Liber Zero tables, which are pretty close in results to the LBBs. The side effect of this is that most of the treasure is pretty modest except for the one huge treasure on the secret island. Getting to it is tricky, but it means that potentially a group of 1st and 2nd level adventurers could gain a level with a minimum of monster-slaying. On the other hand, those adventurers who like to completely clear a level and take everything that's not nailed down can probably squeeze more money out of the barrels of fermented beetle-milk, which could probably fetch 20 to 40 GP per barrel.