Dungeons are People

"Brother listen to me! The Dungeon is my character!" -Brad Kerr

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This post is a (lightly unhinged) dive into why I created an index-card based tool for making dungeons based on the archetypical character creation process, beginning with rolling 6 stats.

Here’s the tool.

It’s sick as hell, and I’m using it to crank out better dungeon prep than I have ever had before. I made a Mineraft themed one-shot with and for my son in about 20 minutes.

It’s in beta testing and I need feedback. Get on it, ye mad fools!

Now… go-go-gadget blog post!

Dungeons are people.

A good dungeon is not just a set of locations. A good dungeon, a memorable dungeon, a dungeon worth dying in, has personality. It believes things, it wants things, as people do. It is a person.

The Tomb of Horrors is an asshole who believes it’s smarter than you. It wants to laugh at you while you die.

Winter’s Daughter is a melancholy noble who believes in evil. It longs to be whole.

The Keep on the Borderlands is an unscrupulous merchant who believes you look capable. It will pay you to kill orc babies for him.

The Tomb of the Sea Wolf King is a seer in reindeer antlers who believes the gods drink blood. It won’t let you back in the village until you’ve earned a name.

At the end of this post, you’ll get a handy tool that fits on index cards to make a character you’ll delight in playing at the table. (A character who happens to be a dungeon.)

Microcosm, Macrocosm

There is in each person, [monster], and [dungeon], a star which mirrors, matches or is in some sense the same as a star in the heavens.” —Paracelsus (…sort of)

I’m a Shakespearean actor by training, trade, and passion. In the Elizabethan worldview, Man is made in God’s image. All of creation is, if properly ordered, a fractal of God. The family, the state, the church, each one has a head that leads it, hands that do its work, and so on. All are made in God’s perfect image.

I don’t think it’s… like… a good worldview. (Darling, I’m a racist theocratic patriarchal monarchist because our lord GOD is a racist theocratic patriarchal monarchist!) But it rapidly orders the world in a specific way. And that’s what Dungeon Masters need.

Who is this dungeon?

“There is one God that is Lord over the earth, and one Captain that is lord over the [Dungeon]!” —Captain Ahab (…sort of)

You’re the lord of your dungeon. Ask not what is in it! Ask who it is.

Make it in the image of someone specific. Anyone you want. Make everything in that dungeon be a part of the macrocosmic explosion of that person. It can be anything: an insufferable cleric dungeon, a wounded paladin dungeon, a revolutionary peasant dungeon, a neglected elder dungeon, a has-been musician dungeon.

Ms Screwball has a good, weird, compelling take on this. If your dungeon was a rat, here’s a good curse, from Ms Screwball’s bloggie-nominated post, make better mind pictures:

curse as rat: a gnawing filth. small things at first. spoiled food and grime. now marks in your flesh, wounds multiplying as through breeding on your body. your eyes dance awake at night, skittering wild around the room.

You already know how to make characters. Just make them into dungeons.

If you’re reading this you have the basics process memorized. Roll 3d6 for six stats, sort out what archetype it falls into, and improvise outward from there.

Dungeon Process

We’re going to roll 3d6 down the line.

Each stat will be one room of a six room section of dungeon. (This has been done before, but not, to my knowledge, in as thorough and useful way as we are about to.)

Each of the die rolls will tell us something specific.

We’ll slice each stat six ways, and put each slices through a set of tables. This will give us a strong, specific framework for six themed rooms of a dungeon.

1. Roll Stats

Roll stats for your dungeon. let them tell you about it. A high strength, low intelligence dungeon is a dumb fighter; it will confront you directly. A high dexterity, high charisma dungeon is a charming thief; it will steal something from you while showing you a good time. A high wisdom, high constitution dungeon is a ranger. It knows how to survive anything. A high charisma, low strength dungeon is a sorcerer. It deals with demons.

Each stat corresponds to one room. The framework also inspires interaction with the game’s building blocks — a strength room might have something heavy in it, an intelligence room might have something tricky in it. And so on.

Each die tells you something. Slicing the stat into three individual die rolls gives each room three results on d6 tables, determining the basics about a room.

• number of connections it has
  (based on the logic of wallet dungeons)

• size
  currently broken into the close, near, double near, and far ranges (as pioneered by Traveller, popular today in Shadowdark and ICRPG)

• type of room
  (based on the old B/X dungeon stocking rules, but with added flavor from Arnold K/Goblin Punch and the Designing Dungeons Course (or, How to Kill a Party in 30 Rooms or Less) by Josh McCrowell and Warren D.

Each pair tells you something. Slicing the stat into three pairs of numbers (first two dice, second two, outside two) gives each results on a variety of d66 tables, determining more specifics about each room, such as room type nd flavor

• specific room type

• room features

• interactions

• spoors

And of course, the building blocks of challenge and incentive: what I think of as the T.O.M.B. elements:

• Traps

• Obstacles

• Monsters

• Boons

In total, each room becomes a unique combination of 126 elements. 3d6, rolled 6 times, gives a HUGE amount of random data. It also organizes those random numbers in a framework. And folks, the combination of random inputs and familiar frameworks why we have tables in RPGs!

Because you roll in groups of six, you generate clusters of six rooms, each of which will have a distinct personality. It’s up to you how to relate them to one another. Maybe one of your clusters is a charming thief, and another is a drunk jerk. This method of designing in clusters gives you thematic shifts and dynamism. Whee!

In my next post, we’ll walk through a complete dungeon creation process using this tool. Feedback on the tool as it evolves is very welcome.

The Tables

Alright you filthy animals. I know you want it. I could list them all here but there are hundreds of entries. It’s a spreadsheet.

Here’s the engine.

Make a copy and swap out entries for different flavors of dungeon. Enter numbers for your die rolls on the orange cells and watch the magic spool out results. look at the spreadsheet.

And yeah there’s some filler entries on the Boons table because I’m not done yet! And I’m not Chris McDowall, who apparently eats dice for breakfast and sweats elegant, flavorful tables!

Leave a comment with the Boons I should include.

The Tool

But do you really want to start with the spreadsheet?

Or… do you want an interactive, color-coded, savable, printable pointcrawl-mapping tool? ANd by printable i mean it’s optimized to print your work on 3x5 index cards.

Here’s the tool, ye mad fools!

Next up

We’ll walk through the Dungeons are People dungeon creation method in an example. At the end of that, you’ll have the first six rooms of a masterpiece dungeon, or a 6 room one-shot you can slap on the table and play immediately.