The Copy and Paste Manifesto

I have gone on record as saying that making a megadungeon is fun and easy. I wrote a book about it. 

But I have good news. It's even easier than I made it out to be. 

I want to introduce to you an ethos for your gaming called...

The Copy and Paste Manifesto

In the introduction to That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis acknowledges science-fiction writer Olaf Stapledon and his work: "Mr. Stapledon is so rich in invention that he can well afford to lend, and I admire his invention (though not his philosophy) so much that I should feel no shame to borrow."

I have liked this quote ever since I read it and have borrowed it frequently. Indeed, anytime I ever steal and riff on other people's work, I usually quote it in whole or in part. I think it is enormously self-satisfying for me to have stolen the caveat of "Hey, I'm stealing this from someone else."

You might also have heard the frequently misattributed quote: “Good artists copy, great artists steal.”

I am here to tell you that this is absolutely how you should go about running your games.

Loving the manifesto

There is no one perfect dungeon. When you run The Yellow Book of Brechewold, you think the elven ship sublevel is a little too much science fiction for your fantasy and you cut it. (Cut, Copy, Pate Manifesto doesn't have the same ring, but cutting is part of this.) 

There is no one perfect campaign. When you run Dolmenwood, you want to start the players in Brandonsford (from Black Wyrm of Brandsonford) to give the players some immediate fairy tale hooks and quests from those NPCs. You take Brandsonford and place it into hex 1205. 

There is no one perfect megadungeon. There is only the assemblage of dungeons hand-stitched together.  You take two dungeons from Silent Titans, Sersa Victory's Lost Caves of the Worm Witch, and the Nexus of the Ix (from Knock! #3). You connect them together thematically and with a map. 

There is no one perfect game. You run OSE but you borrow the lockpicking mechanics from Errant, the starting equipment packages from Cairn, and the XP procedures from a blog post you read once. 

There is so much good content out there. The Copy and Paste Manifesto tells you to use all of it. Create the perfect game for you by combining all of your preferences together and cut the stuff you don't like. 

No more bemoaning that you're never going to get a game book to the table. "When do I have time to run yet another adventure? Who will possibly play this new system with me?" No, shut up. That's not why you buy books. You buy from them to steal from them. 

Living the manifesto

When I playtested His Majesty the Worm, my megadungeon was a vast array of content copied and pasted together. (That's why I've never shown it to anybody.) 

I want you to do what I did. Here's how:

Step 1: Get some maps

These can be maps you make, a map you randomly generate through something like watabou, a map from a professional cartographer, or any combination thereof. 

Step 2: Number the rooms

Number the rooms in three-number codes (like His Majesty the Worm recommends). Level 1 has rooms 101, 102, 103, etc. Level 2 has rooms 201, 202, etc.

Step 3: Start your dungeon reference sheet

Use a Google Doc. Label your different dungeons as Header 1. Label your rooms as Header 2. Make your header styles look nice. 

Step 4: Grab dungeons

Go into your ever-growing folder of RPG supplements, adventures, and dungeons and begin opening the PDFs. 

Step 5: Copy and paste

Grab the content that's the best and start copying it into your Google Doc. Find themes that make it all work together. Cut out stuff that you think doesn't fit your style. Level 1 might be mostly from the same source, but shifted around to fit your new map and create connections to Level 2. You decide to put an NPC from Level 3 into Level 1, to create a throughline between the entrance and a deeper section of the dungeon. 

Step 6. Repeat, infinitely

Buy more games. Add more sections to your world. Let your players travel from Dolmenwood to the Valley of the Flowers. When they fall asleep, they wake up in Zyan. 

Copy, paste, mash up, remix, and make the perfect game for you and your table.

While I have you: The Knock! #5 campaign is almost complete

One of the main places to copy and paste from is Knock!. Whenever I start a new campaign, I always reread all of my old issues. There are so many good ideas, so many stealable rules, so many cool tables, so many neat gimmicks. It always gets my brain going and makes me excited.

As of this writing, there are less than two days left on the Kickstarter campaign. Make sure you don't miss out! 

Banish your FOMO by grabbing your copy!