About a year ago Stella Condrey hosted an RPG writing jam on the Thinking Adventures server called ‘The East Lake Survey’. I believe it was after some discussions about the importance of raw Legwork in writing. She wrote up a barebones bestiary and an 8*8 hexcrawl and it was everyone’s job to flesh out their own version of these initial prompts. This meant that each person created a different interpretation of the East Lake region: in a specific spot in one version there might have been 8 little goblins running around protecting a magic sword, but in another 8 ATVs were parked protecting an artillery battery. The results of that jam were published here. It was an amazing thing to take part in.

Folks on the server kept saying that we should do another instalment of Eastlake, so in the spirit of legwork I eventually just set about creating a new jam. This time, contributors would write their own version of a dungeon.

I’ll briefly detail the process I went through to make the prompts:

• The original jam’s bestiary was composed of a dozen or so classic monsters, but I figured as this was a dungeon it should feature a slightly smaller cast: I set out a list of six monsters that were equally classic but more common to a ‘dungeon’ environment.
• The Eastlake region had 32 keyed hexes, so I gave the dungeon 32 rooms. I created the barebones prompt for each room using a version of the stocker here, which was based off of the Wolves Hexfill procedure: on a d6, 1-2 is Nothing, 3-4 is Monster, 5 is Treasure, 6 is Special.
• Then, I went over the rooms and added slight spice and details (suggesting that some traps involved ‘water’, or that there were ‘other intruders’ in a room, or that some monster rooms contained multiple kinds of creature).
• Then, I determined how many monsters were present in each relevant room: I did this roughly based off the No. Appearing value from the original statblocks, but did cruelly choose to throw people for a loop by saying that the Vampire room had 2 vampires in.
• I stocked the treasure rooms with four archetypal magic items: Paper (meant to evoke a spell scroll), a Tool, a Weapon, and a Rod (a wand or staff or such). Then, I just made a few simple prompt lists for other common dungeon fare: a d4 Rumours table, and a list of three factions.
• The final step, and the one I felt most uneasy about, was the map. Part of dungeon creation is sensing out the spatial logic of a space (“why would there be eight lizardmen in this room directly next to the dragon?”), so I felt it was necessary to have one. What I ended up going with was a direct copy of the first 32 rooms of the Caves of Chaos from B2 Keep on the Borderlands: if you look at the map I made, you’ll see that the room layout is almost identical down to the specific undulations on the wall. I did get a little worried that specifically ‘setting’ the map in a cave-like environment would influence people, but I think I stressed that it didn’t need to be the case.
• And that was all. I made a little post on the server, set a deadline, and the Die Was Cast.

That deadline passed last night at midnight. Watching people share their work and praise was a wonderful thing: this is what jams are all about. We ended up with contributions from about twenty people! Congrats and thanks to those people, and also everyone who read or commented on their work during the jam. Thanks especially to Stella for setting up and hosting the previous one and helping me out with this one.

Now, what remains is the arduous task of editing and laying out each contribution so that they can be compiled in a single volume. If I can get my act together we might even get another physical run.

Below, I’ve also pasted the prompts so that you too, dear reader, can host this jam if you so wish. Thank you for reading.

Generalities

Monsters:

1. Acolyte.
2. Kobold.
3. Giant Animal.
4. Slime.
5. Undead.
6. Vampire

Magic Items:

1. Paper.
2. Tool.
3. Weapon.
4. Rod.

Rumours (true or false):

1. Historian’s Fact.
2. Superstition.
3. Bedtime Story.
4. Treasure.

Factions (optional):

1. Faith.
2. Guild.
3. Nobility.

The Map

The Keys

Only look at the room keys once you've filled in the generalities.