This Used To Be About Dungeons

Always the Dungeon Master, never the jail keeper.

Juniper Smith is trapped in a prison that seems to be of his own design. Everywhere he looks are bits and pieces of the game worlds he used to make back on Earth.

Now, he finds himself on the run from the law and helping out criminals, looking for magical solutions to centuries-old magical spirits trapped in bottles. Can he trust an elf that's been locked away since the bad old days of the Second Empire?

Danger lurks around every corner, and trust is hard to come by, even within the party that grows more like family with every passing day.

Juniper was always the Dungeon Master, never the player. He was always a creator of worlds rather than the one who walked within them…until now.

Somehow, the tables have turned in the most dramatic way possible. Juniper finds himself in a world filled with the wildest fantasies a mind could come up with, and his fingerprints are all over it.

Throughout this world, echoes of his own ideas and plots leave him feeling like he’s always one step behind. He finds bits and pieces of ancient influence strewn about every town he goes through. One thing is clear, though: Juniper walks this magical new world in someone else’s shadow.

It might all add up to something vital...if only he can survive long enough to figure it out.

This Used to be About Dungeons is a comfy slice-of-life adventuring story that occasionally features dungeons. Updates Wednesdays and sometimes Saturdays.

Mostly it's about walking in the woods with a friend, looking for mushrooms to put in your soup, or haggling with the guy selling squash, or taking care of a neglected garden. It's putting some jam on shortbread biscuits. And yes, sometimes you go down into the dungeons with your friends, and you kill monsters there, or disarm traps, but when you come out, you realize you've found the perfect magic item to give to one of the local kids that helped you out when your cat was sick. Look, the dungeons are always going to be there, and sometimes you need to make a journey to one of the Spirit Gates, or make a pilgrimage with the local Cleric of Symmetry to a holy shrine. Your tour through the local dungeons can wait. You'll have rivalries with other groups, and find some dungeon eggs that need to be carefully incubated in case they turn out to be something valuable, and help a friend to build a fishing weir. There's a big world out there, a mostly tame place with lots of magic, and even more to do and see. Join me, won't you?