Caves & Layers

The big news this week is the new ‘roll you own sandbox’ feature, but before I tell you more about it, I want to unveil the new caves and lairs maps:

This is a big change in the dungeons module (and a much needed one). The areas descriptions in caves were also adjusted to match. I complemented this with a slightly refined read-aloud boxed-text generation across the board and I’m now working on improved dungeons encounters, treasures placement and foreshadowing.

Roll your own sandbox

Pressing the 2d6 button in the sidebar will now lead you to the sandbox generator page where you can set the generator parameters and roll your own sandbox.

You can currently control things like the overall scale of the map and biomes probability, number of settlements, dungeons, inns and factions as well as the probability of their different types.

This is available thanks to our Patreon supporters, but our capacity is still somewhat limited, so I’m throttling the number of generators that can run concurrently (so the server may come back with a ‘too busy’ message).

Traps!

Treasure and dungeon areas are now much more dangerous to loot or explore. There’s a new traps model added to the generator, versatile enough to extend further, and it’s already adding a lot of flavor to the crawl.

Coming soon..

I’m now working on adding even more variety to the dungeons. I’m going to include dungeon ‘centerpieces’ - unique areas that will host the more dangerous encounters and the most valuable of treasures.

I’m also introducing less ‘packed’ dungeon shapes.

Once I get the dungeons to look the way I want them to, I’ll move ahead and add more content to settlements and NPCs. I’ll revisit shops and services descriptions and inventories, and then I’ll move up to add more realm-level content, quests and backgrounds.

Finally, I’ll go back to the hex-level again for another iteration of work there.

That’s all for now. I wish everyone a super amazing holiday season and a Happy New Year!

Enjoy the Crawl,

Ithai