Total Improv: Dungeons

Or, how to do dungeons the lazy way.




Step 1: Seed

Come up with your dungeon's Seed. A Seed is a word, phrase, list of content, or entire sentence that describes your dungeon's theme, milieu and possible inhabitants.

Examples:

• A pirate ship run aground on a beach infested by malevolent, animated stones.
• The winter scene from Inception, but with snow goblins hiding in the pine trees.
• A japanese tea house in a besieged city while the worst storm in a century is raging outside.
• Mountain, fury, goats, wine.

Step 2: Level
What's the level of this dungeon?

Dungeon Level D6:
1-2 Low-level, 1d6 levels lower than average party level. Minimum is 0.
3-4 Mid-level. Same level as average party level.
5-6 High-level. 1d6 levels higher than average party level.


Step 3: Wandering Monsters
List 6 possible wandering monsters derived from the seed, using Chris McDowall's excellent small tables here.

Step 4: Room Amount
Decide how many rooms the dungeon will have. This could be handled in three ways:

1. Pure fiat, deciding on a whim when you're done.
2. Use the table here for surprise.
   
   Dungeon Size 1d12
   1-3. 1d6+2
   4-9. 2d6+4
   10-11. 3d6+6
   12. 4d6+10
   
3. The Five Room Dungeon method. 1. Guardian, 2. Puzzle/RP, 3. Setback, 4. Climax, 5. Reward/Denouement. The dungeon doesn't need exactly 5 rooms, since each step can be broken down into 5 further rooms. Chain multiple 5Rds together and end with the climax to create an epic dungeon.

Step 5: The Stocking Table
For each room, roll on the stocking table.

The Stocking Table
1. Create mapping complexity
2. Offer toy or small reward, disguised, guarded, or not (usually not)
3. Offer lore (used to overcome risks or guardians, oversupply to create red herrings)
4. Offer reward, guarded or disguised
5. Offer reward, unguarded and plain
6. Offer risk, disguised or plain

Use mindmaps to chart the dungeon. Example below!

Step 6: The Encounter Table
Uses this as inspiration. Roll a d6 every turn or more, depending on how intense you want the dungeon to be.

1. Encounter
2. Glint
3-4 Locality. Can be dungeon ambience at low threat levels, or the very dungeon making life difficult for the PCs at higher threat levels
5. Torch
6. Torch+Lantern


And finally, why hasn't the dungeon been looted yet?
1. Entrance is trapped
2. Entrance is hidden
3. Entrance is guarded
4. Entrance is sealed
5. Entrance is opened and one-way, the exit is (roll again)
6. Entrance is inaccessible
7. Entrance is non-existent
8. Roll twice, combine