2024 GM'ing Challenge

#Dungeon23 built a strong community centered around an interesting challenge.  I did not make the attempt, but I loved watching the communities projects develop! 

There has been varying spinoffs for 2024—Lore24, Hexplore24, and a few others.  None have fully clicked for me.  One piece of Lore a day doesn't seem the most actionable—it is vague enough to where I don't think I would derive a sense of progress with each subsequent day in comparison to creating a new dungeon room.  A dungeon room has a clear metric for success and each day builds on the one prior.

So my challenge to myself is as follows: A daily task with the theme changing each month.  

January will be 5 Room Dungeons.  

• Day 1: Theme, Concept, and initial approach observations 
• Day 2-6: One room per day, adding empty rooms as thematically necessary
• Day 7: Touch ups, treasure 

The reason that treasure gets its own day is because I think that is one of the weakest parts of my prep and I want to spend additional time focusing on placing treasure.  If you are interested in doing this as well, I would recommend changing "treasure" to an area you feel where you will benefit from extra focus.  "Touch ups" is also otherwise super vague and an easy day to lose momentum.  I'm allowing empty rooms to be added as the amount of extra work is low and it is an optional seasoning.

I chose 5 Room Dungeons because January is all about getting back to basics, resetting, and trying to set new habits.  A 5 Room Dungeon is simple, clean, and the most basic new GM task.  Reading So You Want to be a Gamemaster has helped motivate me to reassess my GM'ing abilities and focus on improving the "basics."

This will be done Jan 1st, Jan 8th, Jan 15th, Jan 22nd, and Jan 29th—to end on Feb 4th.  

Each month I'll have a new challenge (to start on Feb 5th).  Changing categories will keep it fresh and motivating—ensuring my interest doesn't grow stagnant.  Possible challenges include: City streets and buildings, a hexmap with each hex described, random encounters, and random tables.  I can also return to an old category later if I have more creative juice in that area. 

I don't have a catchy name for this—GM2024?  

Wish me luck!