OSR: The Indefinite Train - Community Project

I'd like to try running a collaborative community project.

The Indefinite Train

There's a giant train that passes through many worlds. Everyone writes a one-page dungeon carriage using a template. The carriages get stitched together to make a sort of randomly generated segmented megadungeon, suitable for drop-in games, travel between worlds, or extremely random encounters. A summary of the setting and some design notes can be found in this folder.
 
All you need to do to contribute is copy the template to your Google Drive (or download it, but don't blame me if the formatting goes all wonky), edit it, then post it to this folder. Anyone can contribute!

If you want to test ideas or ask for advice, stop by the #gygaxian-train-assembly channel in Chris McDowall (Bastionland)'s Discord.

Here are two example carriages I whipped up:
Goblin Cannonade
The Roving Library of the Carnelian Sphynx

Backstory

There's a train. Possibly the Train; all others are imitations. Carriages are 100' wide and 200' long. Two levels and a roof. Every carriage has a door at the front (upline) and back (downline) and a roof hatch. It travels at 66.6 miles per hour. Some people say the Engineer, the Train's driver, is God (or a god) fleeing the end of the world. People have visited. They say if you reach the Engine you can ask the Engineer to grant one wish.

At the front of the Train, complex machines lay down new track, throw up bridges, and cut tunnels. At the other end of the train is Hell, or something like it. Demons and strange monsters infest the carriages there.
 
The angels of the Engineer are the Conductors, masked floating giants clad in blue and white. Their functions are mysterious. They don’t seem to understand how people work.

Sometimes, usually during storms, the Train's carriages rearrange. The track branches and reforms. New carriages arrive, old ones vanish or switch places.
 
The Train has been traveling for a very long time. Many carriages have been completely converted to new forms: temples, dungeons, palaces, villages, farms, etc, etc, etc. Some raid, some protect, some just exist. The loot and detritus of ten thousand worlds. A vast city of self-contained feuding blocks, reshuffled every so often to let new feuds rise to the surface.

The Train passes through many worlds. It doesn’t travel through space or underwater, but it can turn up almost anywhere there’s a breathable atmosphere. The train typically tries to pass through flat areas at least 100’ wide, but it can bore through mountains, throw down bridges, or rearrange buildings as it roars through a city. Old timers say it once tunneled straight down for a week and everyone had to hang on to the walls.

Boarding The Train
Sometimes, inhabitants of worlds visited by the train are scooped up and tossed into a new or existing carriage, along with treasures, supplies, livestock, etc, etc. It seems a bit arbitrary. New sentient arrivals are given a Ticket. Anyone who falls off the train while holding a Ticket will be collected by a Conductor and placed back on... somewhere. Tickets are transferable and extremely valuable.

People also sneak aboard the train. It’s a great way to travel between worlds, provided you don’t have a particular destination in mind. Illicit arrivals don’t have start with a Ticket.

New arrivals are usually too disorientated to throw away their tickets and leap off the train before before they’ve reached a new world. Would you really risk leaping off a moving train into a new and dangerous landscape?

Altering Your Carriage
Messing with the carriage structures seems to be fine. Messing with the wheels and linkages, not so much. Conductors turn up if anyone interferes with the wheels or tries to derail the train.

Final Notes

This project was made possible (in a vague way) by backers of my new Patreon, and the inescapable feeling of dread and guilt it inspires. Hooray!