In late 2022, Sean McCoy of MOTHERSHIP fame dropped a fun idea on Twitter: Dungeon23, wherein you create a dungeon by writing up a room for every day of 2023. 365 rooms, 12 floors, and at the end of the year you’ve got a megadungeon. This was immediately jumped on by dozens of people, one of whom started selling branded notebooks and the rest who drew a few rooms and then got bored and gave up. And then there was Sean.

No, the other Sean, the one behind Orbital Intelligence, who sent me nearly 400 pages of raw manuscript in February 2024 and said “here, I did it.” What I had in my hands was Snake Wolf 3, the culmination of the story of alien abductions, kaiju cultists, god-killers, and strange government conspiracies. A monster of a book that contained over a dozen factions vying for control, a six-floor dungeon with six alternate reality dungeons “just for fun”, and a dozen appendices. And I was the one who had to put it all together into something approaching a playable game.

Reading through it, I was struck with the brilliance of the mechanics and the true originality of the setting, characters, and story. It was, quite frankly, too good to be read by most people. So, like a jealous lover, I set about hiding my treasure from the world. Fully-justified monospaced fonts? Absolutely. Inconsistent grids that frequently collide with themselves and each other? More likely than you might think. Obnoxious background textures? In three different colors, baby. 

I could have left it at that, and taken solace in the idea that if nobody could read the damn thing, its secrets would belong to Sean and I alone. But that wouldn’t be sporting. I decided that some concessions had to be made. A running border showed you your current page (with reference to the total page count), your chapter, and your subchapter at all times. Each of those labels was hyperlinked, allowing a reader to access almost any page from any other page at any time. I resolved to leave the dungeon room descriptions unmolested, thinking that if somebody actually got around to running the game, I should at least give them a fighting chance. 

I don’t agree with all the decisions I made on this book. Many are ugly, unnecessary, and downright spiteful. But I just couldn’t let people access it so easily. Snake Wolf 3 is an ordeal, a test of the worthy that I think few people will have the strength to pass. If you’re not one of them, just squint your eyes and enjoy the pretty shapes.