The Campaign

So the campaign I have in mind for the kids is like this:
 
The party will consist of my kids and my wife, plus whatever companions they choose to bring. The pool of possible henchmen will largely be ripped from whatever my kids are into at the time. Current TV habits suggest Tarzan, Po from Kung Fu Panda, and Gecko from the PJ Masks, all of whom would be pretty solid companions. I'll also add family pets and favorite toys to the list, like Hamlet the Hedgehog Knight, and Eldest Daughter's stuffed owlbear Lord Reginald Ursinius von Owlington.

The exterior is going to be a weird sandbox world, taking a little bit after Adventure Time - split into weird themed kingdoms, nearly everyone being bizarre and not human, running largely off bizarre video game logic, etc. The home base will be a little kingdom called Glenvale that I'm not going to detail until they make characters. I figure that way I can tailor it to the PCs in case Daughter wants to be a princess or something. There are two castles in town. Castle Glenvale is where the king and queen live (probably the party too). Castle Pendalton is on the outskirts of the village.

Castle Pendalton (named after one of my old AD&D characters) is going to be a megadungeon that serves as the central pillar of the campaign. Anytime there isn't a specific mission to the outer world going on, the party will mostly be exploring it. The castle is located at a dimensional nexus. The main entrance opens onto level B1F, and from there you can go either up or down. The lower reaches of the dungeon descend into a ridiculously deep well of chaos magic. The deeper down you go, the weirder the dungeon gets. The upper reaches were constructed millennia ago as a magical capstone on the madness. They were built by a decent perfectly sane wizard (my old PC) who managed to get himself unstuck in time via a magical wishing accident. He keeps bouncing between different eras uncontrollably and as a result none of his workings ever get finished properly. Either his castle keeps getting infested by chaos monsters in his absence, his spells get warped by chaos magic leaking up from the deeps, or the enchantments go wild because one of his random time-skips happen midway through the spell and he disappears without finishing it. A lot of this blog is going to cover the design process for this dungeon.

Next up: The dungeon overview.