Pretendo Games

2023 is over, and with it, the #Dungeon23 challenge: a yearlong effort to create a 365-room megadungeon, one day at a time. Now that I’ve filled two notebooks with a pair of soulslike adventures, I’m reminded of a birthday card I once got from my wife:

I share this sentiment with everybody who completed Dungeon23 with me, and really, everybody else who made it through that year intact. Seriously, congrats on not dying. Sometimes that’s a bigger achievement than it sounds.

Forgive the gag, but 2023 was “the Dark Souls of years” for me. Between long covid, getting caught in a mass layoff, and multiple deaths in the family, just getting through the year, day by day, often felt like a struggle.

Even when my things were at their worst, however, I found the energy to write up a couple rooms for my Dungeon23 projects. That routine made all the difference in making sure I didn’t just succumb to despair, and had something to dream about on days when I could barely move. No matter what I do with this material next, just having a daily creative exercise was really important for me, and I intend to keep up that habit.

I hope to publish one or both of my adventures someday, but I’m not ready to slap a “Coming Soon!” sticker on a few hundreds of pages of notes. I still have a handful of other work-in-progress projects I’ve already invested quite a bit into, as well, so I need to figure out how to prioritize what gets done next. But I feel like I’m going into 2024 with a lot more practice at doing big things in small pieces.

(As a side note, I knew many might think it strange — or obsessive, or unimaginative, or what have you — for one guy to work on two soulslike adventures at the same time. In retrospect, it’s obvious that the last few years have left me, and many others, with a lot to process related to death, gradual cognitive impairment, and loneliness. “Write what you know” sometimes feels more doable through the gauzy veil of fantasy.)

My big goals for this year are to run the adventures I made for Dungeon23, keep up a new daily journal for adventure design, and put in a little work each week toward actually finishing some of the many projects I’ve started. I’ll probably write a bit about that along the way. One thing I learned from Dungeon23, though, was that if I only have limited energy to do a thing or talk about doing a thing, I’m better off skipping the talking.

I look forward to getting to enjoy what was made for Dungeon23, and doing more still in 2024.