New dungeon as tribute to Jennell Jaquays

I have a new dungeon online!

This one is a special one, as it was done as part of the Jennell Jaquays Memorial Game Jam, which ended today. Should you not know, Jennell was a pioneer in revolutionizing dungeon design and it is very much thanks to her work on Caverns of Thracia or Dark Tower we have these really intricate and kinda confusing dungeons which provide us so much playtime and joy! ;) And she was a trans rights activist - which is so close to my heart! 🌈

In my contribution I wanted to stick with the Ancient Greek theme of Thracia. I brainstormed some subthemes and fate was one of the strong ones which emerged quite clearly. (The journeys of the heroes being their fates.) The Greeks were very clearly influenced by the notion of their fate being determined at birth. And the Goddesses responsible were Clothó, Lachesis and Atropos. I have partially changed their names due to the fact these not being the goddesses themselves (which would be a different challenge), rather some kind of apparitions or mirror images. In the end, these are - as mentioned in the opening sentence of the game - human avatars, some kind of parts of the goddesses which needed to be locked away for them to be effective in what they do. I tried to transform these notions also into their motivations as NPCs. Hopefully this gives them appropriate feel.

Regarding the mechanics the jam did not stipulate a certain OSR or even any other TTRPG system to be used. Therefore maybe my dungeon is not really a totally fitting contribution. It certainly does not follow the tropes of OSR dungeons. It creates more social interactions and dilemmas. And which other system to use for social encounter combats than Genesys RPG? (Oh, should you have other recommendations, please, let me know!) Thus the detailed motivations of the avatars of the Moirai.

The map making was another challenge. I was working with a top-down perspective first but this soon became a problem as I wanted to play with three-dimensionality of the space. The river (threads of fates spun by Clotho being represented by individual water streams) needed to come from somewhere (and it had to be influenced by Clotho's avatar), needed to flow and end at the place where Atropos' avatar was present. Gravity needed to work. And the dungeon map does create and inspire more localized trap-like encounters right away. (Go, create and insert some of your own in!)

I would love to come back to this dungeon and create the profiles for all NPCs in the close future to be used with Genesys RPG... so keep watching this space.

Till then... or till I have other news!

Alex