D-1: Planning out the first few levels

 Tomorrow is the big day, the day I need to do this for real! And of course the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that... The really important day, of course, is the first day I don't want to work on this, or forget to do so--how do I recover and keep a habit going? But I'm sure tomorrow will be pretty simple.

What is the space I'm working with?

Let's make a few assumptions. Combat is the biggest space demand in the typical room: after all, I want any room to be a potentially interesting space for combat. A single move action is 25 ft, and to make that meaningful, speed differences, etc., I want a typical combat room not to be traversable in a single stride. So at a minimum many rooms should be at least 30 ft on a side, probably a bit bigger. Let's say 35-40 ft on a side (7x7 or 8x8  five-foot squares) so that movement choices are meaningful both tactically and for character building.

This leads to a bit of a problem, though: I have to get about 30 rooms on each level. If the average room is 55 squares (a little between a 7x7, 49, and an 8x8, 64, on the smaller side), then I need 1,650 squares/level. The graph paper I have is about 32 x 42 squares, plus some margins which aren't especially useful. But that's only 1,344 squares/sheet. I was kind of hoping to end the year with 12 pages of fully complete map, but I'll have to reexamine that.

Different options to resolve this:

• Adjust the schedule, map the dungeon in 10x10 ft squares. This really cuts down on the legibility and allowed detail of the map, though. I'm not a particularly talented draughtsman, so this is probably a no-go.
• Map out smaller sections of the map, different wings etc. and just make it clear how they fit together. I think this is useful for a conception of how to build the space, but it may be hard or require a lot more advanced planning than I want to do to make everything fit. What if I accidentally create an overlap which I can't avoid, or misdraw a section which I've repeated across two maps, which causes an unsolvable conflict down the road?
• Use a digital tool instead. Obviously this is a great strategy (among other things, it means I can make prettier images to share here), but it means I'd have to learn to use a particular tool and maybe spend more time wrestling with the tool than actually mapping/designing. And it means I need access to my computer every day to make progress, which may not be possible especially depending on my summer plans. Of course, if I'd like to use these maps somehow somewhere somewhen, having digital copies is very nice.

So I'll likely use a combination of 2 and 3; at the very least, I can try out ideas or put rooms down daily on paper, and then (maybe) finalize digitally. Does anyone have a recommendation of a digital tool that's pretty low-effort and easily customizable? For example, I've built maps for VTTs using tilesets, which looks very nice but (a) limits my options and (b) is a ton of time for even small maps, so I'm definitely not going that way.

What am I getting into the next few months?

Because I plan to work floor-by-floor, I'd like an idea of the first few levels. Because of the dungeon design, a tower or fortress with extensive underground space, level 2 will actually be above level 1, the ground floor; level 3 will be directly below level 1.

So level 1 is the ground floor fortifications, and the surrounding 'outdoor' space, courtyards, etc. I also imagine a good part of the fortress was built into the mountainside, so even level 1 will have extensive 'underground' components. I also like the idea of a artificial structure built into a steep slope, so I suspect level 3 and even level 4 will also have areas which have external walls, rather than being strictly underground.

Level 2 is the particularly difficult section, since it's the upper levels of the fortress and particularly the towers. Naturally, the towers will have more than 1 floor; a vertical connection within a dungeon level isn't really that different from a horizontal connection, so I'm not cheating or anything like that.

Level 2 will contain the wizard's tower, and I'd like some of the fortress built into the mountain and some external towers on the defensive works. So I'll need to figure out how many 'rooms' to budget for these, which tells me how many towers I need (since they'll influence the shape and layout in level 1, so I don't want to map myself into a corner.

The wizard's tower was the central keep, and should be a fairly big space, so let's say that's 10 rooms, such as 5 floors split in 2. Because that's fairly big, I'm going to say that's the part of level 2 in the mountain; the lower levels of the wizard's tower are inside the mountain, before the top levels emerge above the slope.

So then if the smaller towers are each 2-3 rooms, and I reserve another 10 rooms for upper levels that aren't in the towers (mostly fighting spaces when this was a functioning fortress), that means I have 4 small towers and the large wizard's tower. That's got great potential for symmetry, so I'm happy with that result. That's enough for me to start sketching overall 'footprints' for the constructed layout of the fortress. Maybe I'll put something together to share an image today or tomorrow.

At some point I'll have to articulate how fortified defenses would work in a faux-ancient or medieval era (plus magic), to clarify my design principles there. But for tomorrow, we're going to design the first room, and it's the first one an adventuring party would see (sort of, we'll get there): the entryway!

Good luck to everyone starting this journey tomorrow, and I hope it takes you to new and interesting places.