It's time to share the secrets behind making a dungeon in minutes. After reviewing decades of Lore of Yore, I made a 7-Die ultimate guide to share my best tips to help you make amazing dungeons.
You now have a complete dungeon. But what is in it?
Each location has a different type of room determined by whatever the die rolled. You can use the roll you got on the paper for all the charts or roll again. §•••§
1. Stairs: straight up &/or down, single or dual,
2. Shaft: ladder, elevator-dumbwaiter (cage/room), disk, open
3. Switchback: straight or curved / 1-4 switchbacks
4. Curved: Spiral, double helix, curved (single or dual).
1. Throne Room: King or Democratic Overlord or Benevolent Tyrant or Accidentally Leader-dude
2. Beer Hall: No real leader, troops are bribed out and a ‘weird’ is held.
3. Religious Convenience: Place normally used for gathering the faithful / has multipurpose / not sacrilegious
4. Ruins / Location Of Deep Value: Stonehenge, colloseum, ancient battleground with specific point where hero was annihilated.
5. Dedicated Town Hall: These people take their politics seriously and also rent this thing out for civic holidays, special events, weddings and funerals of deeply important 'old men with money'
6. Some large open space filled with tents, set up for the moment and leaves no trace.
1. Recycled: The parts, organic, metallic or synthetic, are to be separated and made into other uses.
2. Heated: this may add heat-energy to the area and surviving materials may be recycled.
3. Organic decomposition:
4. Washed Away: water, controlled or not, washes away detritus.
5. Elemental Exposure: wind, beasts, sun, rainfall &/or microbial process.
6. Dedicated monsters &/or creatures: oozes, garbage monsters,
7. Servant-Workers: using an in-house race-species assures the job is done right ('no survivors'), the valuable recyclables are kept and the
8. Combination &/or Outsourced: Some reliable worker or volunteer takes this stuff away.
1. Abandoned creatures: humanoids, beasts, insects, genders, mutation-abberations - in any stage of health.
2. Parts, Tools & Outmoded Devices: some or all of this may be salvageable by the tossers &/or their subservients. Example: destroyed zombies to be cleaned and turned into animated skeletons.
3. Poop: the refuse is biological refuse.
4. Unwanted Foodstuffs: 'food to one is poison for another'
5. Stage Processing: extracted rock to mining sludge / ore to ingots, pelts to leather or parchment, etc.
6. Intentional Destruction: torture, entertainment (gladiator-derby), ritual-sacrifice &/or use-consumption of original product-creature-thing.
7. Crime & Punishment: 'dump' of creatures or things tossed due to ethical, religious or cultural phenomena. This goes for anything from book burnings to banished creatures.
8. Poverty: Locals cannot perceive the things &/or creatures as having value.
1. Religious festival: religion itself is covered in safety & sanctum. Religious events, however, involve public display to non-believers & quasi-believers. 1.
2. Music & Movement: dance, music, play, movie, theatre, animation-projection
3. library, printing press, simple art
4. sculpture, murals, mosaics
5. festivals, parades, parties, celebrations, time o' year, carnivals
6. travel, diplomacy, spelunking,
7. swimming, skiing, jogging, gymnastics, sails on water or in the air (para-gliding or -sailing)
8. odd device interest: kites, go carts, fireworks, sand sculpture
9. collection: ogres = skulls, dragons = treasure ('amazing ancient coin collection!'), stone giants = amazing portable stone carving, wizards = weird low-magic items, fighters = war gear (swords, knives, helmets),
10. Magical Cultural Function: based on one spell that moves beyond a usual scope - see below.
1. Individual bedrooms: These are lucky monsters.
2. Open bedroom-hallways: semi-private yet connected, leading to a common area - may have low walls to give semi-privacy whilst lying down or thin paper-like walls to shield vision.
3. One massive bed-hall / 'longhouse': One. Big. Room. Or one small room and they pack in tightly.
4. Shelves or lofts on one wall: Similar to American prisons or some tunnel-catacombs. Could have reclined sleeping spaces similar to an airplane. Undead may use standing sarcophaguses next to shelved bodies or even a drawer system like a morgue.
5. Tiers: The most wealthy and powerful on a higher position and each shelf denoting groups of increasingly less value. The higher up, the better the space.
6. Barracks: bunks (two to four beds high) in a line, arranged for simple function, easy cleaning, rapid instruction &/or deploy.
7. Child & Family Focus: community for both privacy and sharing so elders can all help raise children. May include schooling, simple trades &/or training for youth.
8. Tiny houses: On stilts, in pits with roofing (igloo), on a riverbed (beavers), in tunnels (ants) or even tiny beach houses or huts down a long cavern or gorge. Extra points for tiny houses on walls or over streams, like a bridge.
9. Floating: room-set (individual or clusters) on boat-like system (in water, on lava, in sand or in the air) that are capable of moving themselves. Wood elves Animate &/or Awaken trees with treehouses for rapid mobility.
10. Something Else: No idea, drawing a blank here.
1. Smithy / Forge / Refinement: This includes weapon / armour manufacture, farm & utility tools, beast of burden / farming tools, armour, mint (coins), jewelry, cutlery,
2. Earthenware / Stoneware / Porcelain: bricks (houses), pottery (dishes, tool-parts, etc.), tiles and more. This one also includes mosaics, frescos, sculptures, architecture and pairs well with 'odd & rare materials' below.
3. Woodworks / Carpentry: Furniture, cabinets, shipyards, houses, magical wood topography ('bent wood / still alive'), carriages and more. This one works with sculpture, wood golems, siege weapons, twisted (possibly living-growing) tree tools, devices and structures. Note that village-sized trees (that may or may not be sentient &/or ambulatory) fits into this category.
4. Tannery - Furs, Leather & Vellum: Casters, rogues, enchanters and others need this trade. The non magical version of this stinks: most tanneries were banished outside of the city walls.
5. Cloth / Tailoring: Ropes / Sails / Packing: Wool can include any animal fur long enough to be woven. Linen can include cotton & other grass-fibres like bamboo, hemp, ramie, flax and magical grass / bushes trees of any kind. Matches well with tannery.
6. Paper (plant fibre, skin & wood fibre):
7. Butchery / Harvest - processing after any kind of farming.
8. Bakery / All Grains: corn, wheat, barley,
9. Odd & Rare Materials: Rubber, Goldsmithing, Stain glass,
10. Brewery: wines, beers,
11. Chemicals / Alchemy, Minerals (gems) & Energy (oil, gas & mana):
12. Farming: plant & animal husbandry: Beyond the 'farming' table elsewhere, this includes
1. Stable - Mountkeep: rideable creatures in water, air or land - or used to propel an object like carriage-chariot-wagon.
2. Owlery - Falconry - Aviary - Roost: Creatures deliver messages - oft stealthy, clever & small.
3. Zoo - Live Menagerie - Showcase: Creatures meant for modelling, display, curiosity & interest. These creatures are not harmed physically, may double down on mental abuse.
4. Monster Tank - Cage o' Rage - Moatmonster - 'Beyond Here Be Dragons': Monster kept and fed for sole purpose of being a bully, menace and threat to anyone / everyone. Shows owner's power & prestige.
5. Breedery - Puppymill: animals sold for profit and also any other category. Breeders of both genders are often pampered on all levels in hopes for more young / litters.
6. Barn / farming / Beast o' Burden: monstrosity-beast used for farming. A beast of burden can do thousands of things, but farming deserves its own category.
7. Sport-gambling-fighter: creature bred to fight exact same species or similar match in a ring.
8. Butchery - Storehouse: food, leather, textiles & other. Avian-types may survive longer for eggs.
9. Slavery - Monsterbeast is sentient, Awakened or otherwise aware of inequality. Owner-caretaker may not know of this.
10. Pet: these thing(s) are LOVED, no matter how fat, weird, twisted, miserable &/or useless... or in spite of.
11. Kennel: co-hunters, partner in tracking, spotting, disabling &/or defeating targets. Treated well, often (partially) seen as pets, sometimes even as equals.
12. Railbeasts: used as engine propulsion for large machines &/or draft creatures.
13. Experimentation - alchemy, sorcery &/or aberration-mutation: testing of potions, mixing beast types ('owlbear'), magical radiation-curse effects.
14. Punisher / gladiatorial / rite of passage / gauntlet: 'Feed them to the lions!' Used for punishing criminals, sentencing treason-mutiny, testing skill &/or coming-of-age trials.
15. Racer - Trickster - skilled beast: mounted or not, these creatures do something extraordinary. A horse clop-counts, a monkey does tricks, a dog chases a stuffed bunny around a track.
16. Components, magical: separate category for dragons raised to five years for parts, cockatrice feathers, basilisk vomit (alchemist can use bile to restore petrification for any creature or object), poisons from giant spiders and much, much more.
17. Other Beast-Burden work: mining, dockyard, construction, demolition - any heavy lifting.
18. Other transport work: providing lifts for tourists, bringing supplies to the war front, emergency keg-cask on a dog's neck,
19. Guard Monster: creature smells &/or sees disturbances and makes noise.
20. Who knows? I just can't think of more right now.
A Map: the hallway has a map on the wall, on the floor, on the ceiling, within glass, in the shapes in the area or even the construction of the hallways.
2. The Plan: overheard discussion &/or battle-table reveals where the next big strike will be
3. Evil Servants of a Greater Evil: revealed in statues, shrine other.
4. Important Stolen Thing - Stored here in this very room: possibly it looks harmless or is complex, needs special fuel,
5. Locked down Horror: mindless beasts released, disease bottled up, geyser of oozes - something that was left by a previous owner of this dungeon was not meant to see the light of day - kept here.
6. Diary Revelation: Deep Dark Secret of one or more pivotal-key enemy person(s)
7. Discovery: the bad guys are being deceived by a leader-in-disguise for some ulterior motive
8. Teleportation circles / Jump-Leap-Morph Locations / Twisted Space
9. Portals: step through - now you are somewhere else
10. Any basic hallway? Why do the top seven not match?
1. Standing At Arms / Guards: ready for combat // ready to warn either nearby person (reinforcements &/or messenger) or sound alarm (horn, bell, drum, siren, flashing lights, set off doomsday device, etc.)
2. Fallow / Downtime: troops that are eating, sleeping or otherwise armed armoured - but not in tactical formation, awaiting orders / doing light time passing ('making ships in bottles, knitting, cards, checkers’).
3. Sleeping: troops not prepared with armour, arms /or tactics (gear nearby), Damaged /or Wounded: Process for healing, binding wounds - or preparing for suicide / bonsai.
4. Entertained / Event: possibly armed - light or 'show' weapons armour. Strip show with booze. Gaming-sport to build that morale / team building / distraction.
5. Farming or other non-service: military with light gear ('farming tools') used for 'peacetime' trade.
6. Tradespersons: extended / retired / support military ('blacksmith') - making military tools devices.
7. Troop Transfer: troops from another location, another garrison, or changing tasks, marching.
8. Speech, Intel, Orders /or Military 9. Ritual: Event with high ranking creatures, education, morale building.
9. Suffers from intense sentience and rebels &/or decision paralysis existentialism.
10. Deployment Action: busy fighting their enemy - civil war, rebellion /or opposing forces.
11. Storm troopers Suicide Troops Catapult-Balistae These guys are designed to break a line.
12. Sharp Shooter: These folks seek to hit at 600' and then disappear if things look bad.
13. Fetch-Hunters: slavers, hunters and other creatures that seek creatures not to look at them (as a scout) but to do something with them, usually to kill them.
14. Messenger-Parlay-Ambassador-Reconnaissance-Spy: Seeks information on allies /or enemies, specific relationships with such - or both.
15. Exploratory: They really just want to find out what is where and get home again - gaining NOTHING but exploratory informations.
16. Military Preparation Deployment: Armouring, Training, Moving (in vehicles or in formation-march), resupplying (arrows, spears, rations), gaining key ground (hill, bridge, cliff, ship) / tactics
17. Non-military / Non-combat: Trades, Leisure, Sleep, Healing other.
18. Leader group w. retinue / entourage: These guys have 'glasscannon'-artillery, fodder-infantry and tank-brutes.
19. Patrols (security): 'small group of mobile bad guys, composed of same type' (what about guard dogs, horses support vehicles like wagons?) - defeated by strategy / has a 'success', a 'failure' and Matt Coulville has a middle ground of 'patrol investigates the noise’.
20. Scouts: Hardest to see-spot, they goe looking for stuff - mixed unit - example: 2 humanoids and a support dog-like unit. Let them snap a twig, but their job is to report back home (eventually).
big yet stupid ally:
group of visitors:
quasi-predictable / well-placed monster:
slaves:
servants:
workers:
broken in & broken:
release in case of emergency!
mind controlled:
reclaimed ally that went good and then bad again:
brutes of war trained to fight
competition animals meant to look good or race
creatures gladiatorial: fight one another or matched individually or against teams
massive 'dire' or giant versions of common yet edible animals - large spiders, mutant lobsters, chicken-dinosaur hybrids, massive deer,
outright dangerous animal like an alligator or hippopotamus... or trout with a bad attitude
tragically twisted versions of humanoids / still fight but not otherwise functional in their society
chained &/or tortured monsters that function as traps - for anyone that ends up there
chattel servants that can also defend, albeit meekly & weakly
traps that are sentient, learn or extensively complicated
twisted, converted, fallen or tempted
You Drop - pit, pit with cover or lid, chute, slide, slippery slope-stairs,
Things drop on you: any of the piercing, slashing or bludgeoning stuff.
Things move you or to you: floor changes location, floor changes texture or slope or even colour.
Things move you - at a vulnerable or difficult spot into yet more danger: into spikes, flow of element (wind, water, fire, sand), flow of objects (bones, parts, blades, iron spheres, caltrops).
traps that capture &/or reduce options - doors close, walls slide into place, cage bars drop, silence magic, darkness, flash of blinding light, loud deafening-stunning noise, doors close-lock, sand. Mist, grass or shadows covers feet and legs / cover for possible problem, monster or other trap. water prevents jumping or movement
traps that root / slow - frost, net, sleep, poison-intoxication (drunk, confused, inebriate, medicate), web or oozes)
traps that warn, summon &/or give enemy resources (e.g. fire for fire dragons or fire giants or iron golems or 'poison' for green dragons and undead or frost molds that suck up heat etc.)
partial or complete destruction damage sequence of room, zone or area kicks off.
distraction: invaders believe minor inconvenience happened but greater problem is developing elsewhere
forces a deal or negotiation &/or blackmail: danger revealed as possible threat to ally, punishment or 'death trap' / negations forced / conditions given. 'Surrender your weapons or this random innocent suffers [consequence(s)]'
combo, roll here twice on a d10
combo, roll twice - with this roll, add yet another option!
1. Aberration - fear maker but not monger: confusion, unexpected & alien intelligence
2. Beasts - feral / diseased / wild / swarm (small) - some are large-dire but not monstrous (??)
3. Celestial - Judgemental - You Are NOT Worthy / Cleanse anything unclean / Gain power for implementing-enforcing the seven heavenly virtues.
4. Construct - unfeeling, strict rules, robotic, minimalistic. Mute.
5. Dragon - arrogance, pride, vanity, sloth, gluttony, envy, greed - six of seven deadly sins... but not 'lust' so much. Even 'good' metallic ones are deeply 'sinful'
6. Elemental - Four Elements: Sanguine (air / curious-skeptical sylphs), Phlegmatic (water / inspired nymph), Choleric (fire / salamander),Melancholic (earth / industry-gnome)
7. Fae / Farie - 'Elf' unpredictable + 'Elemental' moody + Immortal / Immoral
8. Fiend - 'What Could Possibly Go Wrong'. Also hungers for suffering... of anyone, even self &/or 'allies'. Beyond trust &/or faith - even if the deal goes well.
9. Giant - antisocial &/or resents visitors. Resents small, puny, short and insignificant lives.
10. Monstrosity - like 'beast' but much bigger / sometimes has wild magic
11. Ooze - sneaky - fits under doors / silent / slippery. Always hungry, always mindless, never reasonable.
12. Plant - weedlike creepy & resents cutbacks. Paranoid with fire. Distrusts & resents cultured civilization (hypocritically: 'if elves do it, it is very good - but otherwise society is BAD')
13. Undead - you become one of them / reek of undeath-unnatural.
14. Dwarf 'demi-human' - 'All Work & No Play'. Resents disorderly action &/or thinking.
15. Elf - decadent, chaotic, sarcastic, distracted &/or flip-flighty.
16. goblin - 'Too Many Secrets' - scheming, plotting &/or nefarious
17. orc - 'Break Everything' - excessively aggressive-social
18. Monster humanoid (grimlock, darro ('weird' dwarf??), kuo toa (fishmen), aarakocra (birdmen) and others like SeaSpawn)
19. Humanoid with half beast part(s): (centaur, minotaur, harpy, bullywug, mermaid, kenku, tabaxi, tortle, etc.) - is as beast's worst traits.
20. Magical ('... something turned half-dragon') / cursed ('shape changer') / mix ('owl-bear'): roll twice and pick one you like... or both and mix it up.
