The idea for this dungeon came when a couple of us were talking about the idea of werewolves on the moon. If a werewolf’s power comes from the moon, would being on the moon imbue them with an unimaginable amount of selenic energy and make them unstoppable? Basically, we started with a monster and worked backward.

As I worked with one of our artists, Liz Allmon, to develop the space station’s layout, I realized that some of my ideas were going to be a little too complicated to execute given the space limitations of a one-page dungeon. So the station became more disc-shaped, and the science behind its gravity changed to something more akin to “don’t think too hard about it!” I’m still delighted with our end product, and Liz contributed a lot of good ideas.

Even though I was trying to move away from high-fantasy tropes, I couldn’t totally get away from them. The space station is a mining station operated by, of course, dwarves, so they built a replica tavern to make them feel a little more at home.

I rewatched “Alien” to get a feel for how I wanted the werewolf (who we’ve dubbed Space Wulf Daddy in the office) to skulk around the station building tension for the party’s exploration.

There are a bunch of different ways to get through this and, really, the werewolf can have his final stand wherever your want. This is where I started writing these to be a little more open-world with options for the party to do different things and travel different paths rather than focus on a linear Point-A-to-Point-B narrative.

Freak Out in a Moonstone Daydream // One-Page Dungeon screenshots