Megadungeons? Pfft, megadungeons are so passe.

I keep reading post after post on some of the OSR blogs I'm subscribed to about megadungeons and all I have to say is YAAAAAAAWN! Sure, sure, megadungeons are fine...if you're an old lady and don't have the testicular fortitude to handle a truly manly dungeon: the microdungeon!

Sssh, don't worry, not everyone can handle such a piece of awesomeness as a microdungeon. Just go home and play with your Yu-Gi-Oh cards and hope Santa brings you a bigger pair of balls for Christmas.

So what's a microdungeon, you ask, your voice quivering slightly as you try to man up? A microdungeon is a dungeon that is roughly the size of a shotgun shack.

Floor plan of a shotgun shack.
Credit: Wikipedia.

A "shotgun house" is a narrow rectangular domestic residence, usually no more than 12 feet (3.5 m) wide, with rooms arranged one behind the other and doors at each end of the house. It was the most popular style of house in the Southern United States from the end of the American Civil War (1861–65), through the 1920s. Alternate names include "shotgun shack", "shotgun hut" and "shotgun cottage". A railroad apartment is somewhat similar, but has a side hallway from which rooms are entered (by analogy to compartments in passenger rail cars).

I'll give you a moment to go and change your diapers, because you've undoubtedly wet yourself from the sheer brilliance of the microdungeon. Another feature is that each room contains two thousand chests filled with gold coins* and only one rat. Additionally, the dungeon is populated by old people from a retirement home and will incessantly try to talk to you for hours on end about what things were like back in their day and how Warren G. Harding was a great president.

I'll understand if you can't bring yourself to play a mind blowing, ultra-masculine dungeon. Go and content yourself with your wee little pansy megadungeon.

*Unfortunately, all the coins are the gold plated commemorative ones you see advertized on TV all the time and are each only worth a fraction of the value of a copper coin.