The Shifting City

When I first began working on this mega dungeon project, I knew that I wanted to create something that had an evergreen quality to it. In principle, I wanted folks to be able to replay it and get a different experience. I am also an advocate of emergent experiences in gaming, and so didn't want to create something that was overly prescriptive or planned out.

I also knew I wanted to have an "urban crawl" in the middle of my dungeon. I have fond memories of Tom Moldvay's The Lost City and wanted to evoke some of that feeling. However, urban crawls can be tricky if you don't have enough tools available to build things on the fly.

Out of wrestling with these two demands I have put upon myself grew the Shifting City. I fell in love with the idea that it would move and change every time you came back to it, creating new opportunities for play. The trick was to try and figure out how to make it work.

Ultimately I settled on throwing dice onto some paper and seeing what happens...