I've ended up doing two things for #dungeon23 - a conventional megadungeon, creating one are per week with a different theme and also developing Langwick a little bit. Or a big bit, as it turns out.
When I was testing out Threap, I used it to create a new location for NineTenths, and decided to make a twelve location sketch. I figured I would do *something* with each location each month, but if I'm honest, I really wasn't sure what. Still, Langwick was born and I liked the idea of trying it out as an #outdoor23 location. The sketch map is below:
Originally, I thought I would treat Langwick like the megadungeon, and create a map for each location and add to it each day. I started with location 1, the rock outcrop. For the first six days, I added something to the map of a large rock outcrop - some odd inscriptions, a hidden door, a cave inside and so on.
But it just didn't chime with me, it felt like a chore and I wondered where it would all end up in a month. I thought about adding in new locations, but that felt like moving away from the original one-location-a-month idea.
So. I started again, with a blank document and added the sketch map at the top. Twelve sections, one for each location. And I started to write, a bit of lore, a description, a rumour, whatever, so long as I added something every day.
I have to say that it worked - taking away the need to make a map of a piece of rock and widening the idea of what was an 'allowable' entry about a micro-location opens up a lot of possibilities. Rumours suggest encounters and adventures, encounters feed into a seasonable encounter table. Adventures present patrons and patrons link back to the inhabitants of Langwick and suggest other people who are caught up in events.
Now, instead of a map of lump of rock with some odd markings and a hidden cave, we have The Tooth, a smooth white spire of rock that local legend says is a baby tooth of the world-giant. One of the villagers' children disappeared and their older daughter set off to find them and has also not come back. They ask the characters to help search - he likes looking at the inscriptions on The Tooth, so that might be a place to start? At the same time, another village reported seeing a spider the size of a dog, but as he's well known to like a drink, no one believes him.
The Tooth is shaping up to be an interesting place and we're only half way through the month! I think I'm going to add each location to the Langwick page each month so they'll be a set of twelve pamphlets.