In 2023 I’m diving into the #dungeon23 design challenge, a challenge to do just a bit of game design each day of the year and have a huge body of work at the end of the year. Since I’m exploring West Marches-style design lately, I’m going to take this challenge in a West Marches direction and I’m calling it #marches23.

Each week of the year I’ll focus on designing 1 region. Regions are complex areas with a lot of design bits, kind of like a group of thematically connected rooms in a dungeon. Each day I’ll work on designing a small part of the region I’m working on. I’ll start a new region every Sunday and will post the finished region here on my blog each Saturday. Daily updates will be posted on Mastodon (https://dice.camp/@TheDMPastor)

Design Days (in no particular order)

1. Basic map, environment
2. Entrance, defining features, landmarks, and/or modifier – first thing(s) you notice on entering
3. Hazard or dungeon
4. Primary inhabitants
5. Legendary “boss” monster and their lair
6. Secret loot or lore
7. Random encounter chart

The Marches of Rodinia

Here’s the overall map that I will be filling in with 52 regions over the course of 2023.

We’ll set out from the town of Bastion to see what we can see.