A2.
This is part of the #Dungeon23 challenge in which you make one room to a dungeon every day for a year. In an effort to link my memories to the creation, I am also writing a personal journal entry with each room that may or may not be related.
You don’t have to read that part.
A2.
You enter a tight stone tunnel from A1. A lantern, or other light source becomes necessary to navigate. Those who take the time to inspect the floor, or have a general keen eye, will recognize dark streaks on the ground.
It is/was blood.
The tunnel terminates at a ledge in which a rocky chamber lies 6 feet below. The floor of this chamber is a collection of well rounded boulders of various sizes packed tightly together like eggs in a carton.
The sound of trickling water can be heard echoing in the distance, but the source is not visible. Astute adventurers might assume it is run off from a nearby river.
From the ledge of the tunnel one can see an exit across the room. A dark hole 4 feet in diameter. There are clearly some type of carvings around the hole, but one would have to get closer to investigate.
Navigating into the room may be difficult for the less nimble. Feet may slip and become stuck between rocks, making broken ankles a possibility.
This room is home to several poisonous snakes. They slither in the dark crevices of the rocky floor.
A careless individual may find themselves the victim of a snake bite, that could prove fatal in a few hours unless tended to.
The hole on the other side of the room is surrounded by strange etchings. Those with a background of dead languages or druidic mysticism, will interpret them as some type of prayer for protection.
Entering the hole takes you to A3.
1/2/23
Played Dungeons and Dragons last night. It was a fun session.
The group I’m running for consists of 3 guys from Alabama that I’ve never met and Gail. I have no idea what they look like, but one of the guys was a random Roll20 group I started with like 5 years ago. We’ve been playing nearly every Sunday night during that stretch. Which I think is amazing and insane, considering I can’t get people I actually know to hang out with me that consistently.
Anyway, the campaign I’m running is a conversion of the Age of Worms adventure published in Dungeon Magazine back in the early 2000s. It was meant for D&D 3.5, which I’ve never played, but I thought the story sounded cool, so I’ve been running it for 5e.
If you just read that last paragraph and have no clue about Dungeons and Dragons editions - I’m sorry. It’s not that important.
What is important is that last night we had this cool moment where the players fought a creature called The Mother Worm. I got the sense from the lore that this monstrosity produces carrion crawlers, a pretty standard monster in the game’s history. The description of The Mother Worm was a little wishy-washy on this - a kind of “maybe it’s a historically big deal”, or “maybe it’s just an epic sized monster the size of three story building to beat up”.
So I decided that my players had just discovered the literal source of Carrion Crawlers. Like they come from this one worm, and spread across the planet.
Suddenly the fight had more weight. It could have just been a big smash ‘em up battle, but now there were stakes. They were fighting something with historical significance.
When they finally vanquished the beast they celebrated, realizing they had just affected the entire planet. They realized that they had just made carrion crawlers an endangered species. Now their imagination was wondering about what the future of the world was, like it was a real place. They thought about future generations wondering whatever happened to carrion crawlers, and not knowing it was because four people destroyed some beast called The Mother Worm.
It’s moments like that when table top role playing games come alive. Those moments when you feel like you’re really having an affect on the world. Saving the world from monsters usually doesn’t have that affect, because it feels like that’s the game. Like if you save the world, it just goes back to the status quo.
“Oh the world didn’t end? Good, back to watching the next episode of Is it Cake?”
But if you save the world AND change the way it works - that’s a different ball of wax, right?
“Oh the world didn’t end? Good… wait, lemons no longer exist? This changes everything.”
I think I prefer figuring out how my fictional characters are remembered in their fictional world, more than how I’m remembered in the real world.
That sounds more depressing than I meant it.
Trying to be remembered in the real world just seems like a monkey’s paw wish kind of situation. It’s too stressful to try and control how people remember you, or what other people will think of you when you die. Because at a certain point the image you create for the world is no longer yours - it belongs to the audience.
Even if that image is you.
And they’re going to do with it whatever they want.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this line of thinking but it’s a journal and I suppose I don’t have to go anywhere with it. It’s a work in progress. But I think I’m trying to grapple with being remembered and how people remember me, and being content to just be myself and eventually forgotten. I actually feel more liberated thinking that way, than constantly worrying about the image of myself I want to give the world.
He says while he edits this journal entry.
Yeah yeah yeah, I know.
See you tomorrow.
-Jae
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