Everybody! Alert! I need dungeon rooms for 4 level one players and a CR 1 ally (look up orc forestmaster in hombrew). Hidden under skull rock is a deep shaft leading deep underground, with a spiral staircase leading deeper. In the shaft is a young red dragon, who lightly harasses the party with flyby attacks. The dungeon was created by an insane wizard king who killed many, many people, and put their corpses here for experimentation, but when he was found by a party of adventurers, he was slain. Hidden deep in the dungeon is a crystal that is causing the dead to rise. The necromancer who put it there also left undead guardians, and death traps.
That could be fun exercise in shared creativity :)
However, it might lead to a "Franken-dugeon". Dungeons are not merely an amalgamation of random rooms - they're places which have their own origin & history.
The best laid out Dungeons are salted with clues and artifacts that when put together, can be used to decipher the history of the place. This can be a layer of adventure completely separate from whatever adventure is going on currently.
For example. Let's say that the complex of carved rooms in the mountain bedrock used to be a small Dwarven village of a clan which set out on their own, away from the main Dwarven cities. In mining locally, they break through into an underground cavern, and release a semi-sentient fungal life which slowly takes over the mind of anyone they infect. You could sketch out a story of madness, paranoia, betrayal, civil war, the story of a doomed hero rallying his people against the growing threat and trying to stave off paranoid infighting, and their eventual defeat and succumbing to the mold creatures, and the last survivors forced to tramp into the depths to their doom, in the great caverns where the hive/hive mind of the fungal creatures exists, there to become food for the masses of fungus. And this all happened 230 years ago. That's the history of the place, and we haven't created a single room, yet.
Present day: bandits have taken up residence in Dwarven outpost, and have kidnapped the son of the local Duke, who has in turn hired the Party to retrieve their son. This has nothing to do with the ancient Dwarven tragedy. The Party can sneak through the Dungeon, take out the bandits "Seal Team 6" style, and rescue the Duke's son. In their travels, they run across inscriptions, and notes, and clues as to the ancient tragedy. Do they notice? Do they care? Can they decipher it? Maybe, maybe not - but if they do, and if they decipher enough to figure out what happened to the Dwarves, and where they went, and get the clue to know where to look for the secret door which leads into the mine area ( the main access to the mine area being lost in a cave in ), they can follow the Dwarves into the depths. Why would they do so? Well, because they noticed the inscriptions of the heroic leader wielding a Dwarven warhammer of great and magical power ... and suddenly you have a secondary adventure!
If they don't follow up on the lore of the place, well ... the place still seems somehow integrated, complex, and like it has a history - even if they don't stop to fully decipher it. It adds a lot to the overall atmosphere of the place.
So ....
I you want a collaborative dungeon design - tell us the overall story of this place: what was its origin, and it's history, what is it being used for now. :)
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Everybody! Alert! I need dungeon rooms for 4 level one players and a CR 1 ally (look up orc forestmaster in hombrew). Hidden under skull rock is a deep shaft leading deep underground, with a spiral staircase leading deeper. In the shaft is a young red dragon, who lightly harasses the party with flyby attacks. The dungeon was created by an insane wizard king who killed many, many people, and put their corpses here for experimentation, but when he was found by a party of adventurers, he was slain. Hidden deep in the dungeon is a crystal that is causing the dead to rise. The necromancer who put it there also left undead guardians, and death traps.
I did NOT eat those hikers.
Try this dungeon, but swap out what is at the bottom.
Oh, I was thinking like an add-on thing. Ie: person x describes a room, person y describes a room, and so on
I did NOT eat those hikers.
That could be fun exercise in shared creativity :)
However, it might lead to a "Franken-dugeon". Dungeons are not merely an amalgamation of random rooms - they're places which have their own origin & history.
The best laid out Dungeons are salted with clues and artifacts that when put together, can be used to decipher the history of the place. This can be a layer of adventure completely separate from whatever adventure is going on currently.
For example. Let's say that the complex of carved rooms in the mountain bedrock used to be a small Dwarven village of a clan which set out on their own, away from the main Dwarven cities. In mining locally, they break through into an underground cavern, and release a semi-sentient fungal life which slowly takes over the mind of anyone they infect. You could sketch out a story of madness, paranoia, betrayal, civil war, the story of a doomed hero rallying his people against the growing threat and trying to stave off paranoid infighting, and their eventual defeat and succumbing to the mold creatures, and the last survivors forced to tramp into the depths to their doom, in the great caverns where the hive/hive mind of the fungal creatures exists, there to become food for the masses of fungus. And this all happened 230 years ago. That's the history of the place, and we haven't created a single room, yet.
Present day: bandits have taken up residence in Dwarven outpost, and have kidnapped the son of the local Duke, who has in turn hired the Party to retrieve their son. This has nothing to do with the ancient Dwarven tragedy. The Party can sneak through the Dungeon, take out the bandits "Seal Team 6" style, and rescue the Duke's son. In their travels, they run across inscriptions, and notes, and clues as to the ancient tragedy. Do they notice? Do they care? Can they decipher it? Maybe, maybe not - but if they do, and if they decipher enough to figure out what happened to the Dwarves, and where they went, and get the clue to know where to look for the secret door which leads into the mine area ( the main access to the mine area being lost in a cave in ), they can follow the Dwarves into the depths. Why would they do so? Well, because they noticed the inscriptions of the heroic leader wielding a Dwarven warhammer of great and magical power ... and suddenly you have a secondary adventure!
If they don't follow up on the lore of the place, well ... the place still seems somehow integrated, complex, and like it has a history - even if they don't stop to fully decipher it. It adds a lot to the overall atmosphere of the place.
So ....
I you want a collaborative dungeon design - tell us the overall story of this place: what was its origin, and it's history, what is it being used for now. :)
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
Alrighty, I’ll make an edit to the post!
I did NOT eat those hikers.
Wait, a few days back I had an idea for a dungeon just like your example!
I did NOT eat those hikers.
Except the fungus is still there, and the monsters are possessed miners
I did NOT eat those hikers.
"If it's a good lick, use it" - Lord Buckley ( as relayed by Spider Robinson )
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.