About Return to Cataclysm
This site is made to document the creation of my megadungeon, Return to Cataclysm. I'm not sure if all this will be helpful to anyone, but I had fun running it with my friends and think others might too. If not, GMs might steal ideas from my rooms, which would be a great honour, as I've stolen ideas from better GMs over the years.
I started writing this megadungeon as a way to pass the time when stuck in bed sick. I'm slowly having good days again, so I thought I would teach myself new skills when my mind was clear. Creating this website was the first! I've built websites with tools like Wix before, but I've never coded from scratch.
I've tried to lay out this website as user-friendly as possible. I was initially going to publish it as a PDF, but I wanted to be able to jump between rooms and items via links, making it easier to use for GMing. Hopefully it works for you, but please let me know if you notice any issues or typos!
I plan to publish up to floor 3, which is a considerable amount of content, but I have much more in my GM shorthand. If people are interested in this, I'm happy to publish more.
About Me
I'm Reece, a 30-something sick person from the UK. I used to work in marketing, but a few years ago, I got Long Covid. I've slowly created this world as a way to occupy myself, and it's been an enormous amount of fun.
I also want to thank the group I played with; it was supposed to be a drop-in, drop-out game, but the same group stuck with it for over a year! As a nod to them, I have replaced several NPCs with their characters. Most of them I've had to reduce their level a tad and take some magical items away!
If you have any questions, please reach out:
Email: Reece@returntocataclysm.com
Discord: thedhimself
Other Work: The White Upon the Hills
Artwork
The Homepage Artwork and Grimrest Map are both created by the talented Hugo Benetti. He did great work helping to make this site look way more professional, as my scribbles are good enough for my notes but not for the world!
Please check out his other work and hire him for your projects!
AI Useage
I've used a couple of AI tools throughout the creation of this dungeon and this site. I've kept their use to instruction rather than creation. For example, I've used ChatGPT to teach me how to code this site (HTML & CSS). I've not asked it to generate any code for me, but have used it as a teacher, checking my work for mistakes and guiding me for best practice. It's been an enormous help, and now I only talk to it when I really mess stuff up.
I tried to use ChatGPT for inspiration when I was short on room ideas, but it never gave me good ideas; they were very cheesy or just not fun. A few ideas it provided used keywords that inspired other rooms ideas, but reading a dictionary could have done the same.
I also use Grammarly for my writing as I'm dyslexic and am very bad at spelling. It's good at spell-checking stuff, but I don't always appreciate its suggestions!