Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Quick Dungeon Cheat Sheet

Make a dungeon in ten minutes, using this grid and two dice:
























Instructions: 
1. Fill in a name for each of the following roles:


Entrance:
Level Boss:
Major Minions:
Minor Minions 1:
Minor Minions 2:
Scavenger:
Undead:
Vermin:
Interloper:
Ambusher:
Potential Ally:
Refuge:
Trap:
Impassable 1:
Impassable 2:
Impassable 3:
Dangerous Passage 1:
Weapon Resource:
Water Resource:
Boss Resource:
Boss's Bane:

For example:
Entrance: Pit descending from surface
Level Boss: Ogre Mage
Major Minions: Gnolls
Minor Minions 1: Human wizards
Minor Minions 2: Dwarf mercenaries
Scavenger: Carrion crawlers
Undead: Wraiths
Vermin: Centipedes
Interloper: Party of were rat thieves
Ambusher: Huge spider
Potential Ally: Naga
Refuge: Room with lockable door
Trap: Collapsing ceiling
Impassable 1: Solid Rock
Impassable 2: Collapsed Tunnel
Impassable 3: Coal Fire with Sinkhole
Dangerous Passage 1: Swing rope over stalagmite-filled chasm
Dangerous Passage 2: Wooden walkway over hot mud pits
Weapon Resource: Quiver of arrows
Water Resource: Old well room
Boss Resource: Magic font of clairaudience/clairvoyance
Boss's Bane: The oracular head of his old master, whom he betrayed

2. Use the 6 x 6 grid to represent the dungeon or draw it for yourself.
Roll 2 dice and use one die for the tens column and one die for the ones column to get random values between 11 and 66 that correspond to the numbered squares. Roll once for each monster on the list and place it in that square. So if you roll a 3 and a 4 for the level boss, the level boss will live in square 34. If the same result comes up twice, bump that feature to the next empty square, going clockwise starting from the square above.

3. Add a random impassable boundary between two squares by rolling a d6 and a d6 once more. Draw a heavy line along the top edge of the resulting square. Roll again, except this time, the boundary is along the right side of the square. Keep going until you have four impassable boundaries. Ignore if the result is along the outside border of the grid.


Here's one actual result.





2 comments:

  1. This is really cool. I will try it out as soon as I can.

    ReplyDelete
  2. this is fantastic! makes me want to try and run my first dungeon.

    ReplyDelete

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