Hilander RPGs

Dungeon Creation Procedure

Primarily stolen from Phlox, but with some additions & simplifications.

Concept

A dungeon's concept is the very first thing we know about it. If I'm prepping an overworld, I typically will jot down the dungeons' concepts as I'm going.

"A crypt where the paladins of hell chain the unrighteous for eternal torment, but something is driving the paladins mad."

In the above, you'll notice 3 big building blocks.

  1. General Setting - in this case a crypt, but it could be anything.

  2. Faction - who's the big force here? Paladins of hell. There's also a subfaction here, "the unrighteous," whoever so happens to fit that bill.

  3. Trouble - all is not well. Something bad is happening, and it's likely to get worse.

We don't need to get much more complex than that, especially if we're just prepping an overworld.

Research

It's now time to prep our dungeon, so we're making a mood-board, baby. You can use Pinterest, Google Slides, or Obsidian, or print things out and tape them to your dorm-room door, whatever floats your boat.

The important thing here is to fill your mind with as many images and ideas as you can that are related to your concept. Embrace the wikipedia deep dives, write down notes, but once you have 1-2 pages of notes and images, it's time to move on.

Here we're holding our ideas with loose hands, letting ourselves add on, and modify as we see fit.

Somewhere along the line when creating this board, the phrase struck me, "Hell is full." With the idea being that evil spirits are just being recycled into the mortal realms at this point, so the paladins decided to create their own little expansion to hell, and fill it with all the evil spirits they could capture, primarily through ritual execution and the creation of a downward-winding catacomb. They've made some kind of deal with an ancient spirit that allows them to ensure souls that die within their catacomb are sealed there.

You can see where this is going, right?

Stocking

For now we'll stick with 20 rooms. If you assume an average of 15 minutes per room, this gives us an average of 300 minutes, or about 5 hours. This holds up in my experience, but if your group tends to take their time, this number can go up. Way up. So 20 rooms is a good baseline, definitely enough for 1 session, and probably enough for 2-3 when you add in random encounters, wilderness travel, etc.

This is my recipe, stolen from Phlox, who stole it from Spriggan's Den, and simplified a little. Note that we're not talking arrangement or final rooms yet, this is just to allow us to think about what needs to go in the dungeon.

If you're techy, you could copy the following table into excel or sheets, making it quicker to edit. Or you could copy the contents column onto some graph paper and going from there. Your choice, just do it.

Start by putting all your coolest ideas where they fit, then return to your mood board, monster manual, and treasure tables to flesh out the details.

Contents Example
Monster & Treasure Martos, Paladin (Gluttony), Eating bones, a box of potions he's saving for dessert.
Monster & Treasure Vixos, Paladin (Wrath), Breaking Skulls, Screaming, Sentient Wizard's Skull
Monster & Treasure Teraia, Paladin (Envy), Robbing Quarters, Gilded Executioner's Sword
Monster Chained Ghost, babbling heresy, "the wicked shall inherit the earth. Blessed are the lusty, for they shall be filled." Wants to possess a body and flee.
Monster Gnawing Skull Swarm
Monster 4 Wicked Prisoners, feigning innocence, locked away.
Trapped Treasure Cursed Book of Necromancy, submerged in holy water. Hidden behind a tapestry of a chained & burning necromancer. Currently contains the soul of a necromancer that wants out and is happy to take whatever body is dumb enough to touch it.
Hidden Treasure Unusual urns, filled with the order's coinage.
Trap Hellfire Ward - Destroys even souls, preventing escape, though not rebirth. Triggered by passing by without speaking the prayer engraved above, a holy recitation that burns the mouths of sinners, and is unspeakable by spirits.
Trap Poison, laid by Teraia to keep out thieves.
Special Sophosel, A worn angel, a translucent flickering, gossamer, threadbare, overwhelmed and taunted by spirits of the damned. Will use her final strength to grant a blessing to one who vows to destroy her fallen knights, the only good souls now tormented in this little hell. Becomes a blessed sword, shines, spiritual, +1 vs undead, grows stronger (+1, +2 vs. undead) when the paladins are slain, fades if the quest is abandoned, leaving the oath-breaker cursed with deafness.
Special Soulsnare, a well-chipped block carved from a holy golden tree, those who die on this block are cursed to unlife, snared within their bones.
Special A vat with an ooze inside. Caged bodies are dropped into it, and the bones are removed for burial.
Space Entrance, a loan mausoleum on an ash-gray hill. Words over the top, "Sinners, amend thy way, or find thy way here."
Space A Peaceful Chapel, illuminated holy text open to a passage proclaiming, "and the land shall have it's rest, and the righteous shall live in peace, for no sinner shall be found there, nor shall any turn their face from their neighbor."
Space The end of a long tunnel. Shovels and picks for digging further.
Space Bedroom, austere, etched words on the wall, "hell is full, we must dig further." repeated over and over, filling the entire wall.
Space Small crack to a natural cavern, a few bottles of booze, several empty bottles.
Extra Hellhound, snoozing on a pile of bones, wants to play fetch, but no one's paying attention to it. Can smell sin, borrowed from hell.
Extra Unicorn's Horn, pure heavenly good, solidified. Carefully hidden among the chandeliers. The one who killed it has a skull in these catacombs.

Random Encounter Table

d6 Encounters tends to be plenty. As always, write down the best ideas first.

Random encounters are good places to add "slightly off theme" monsters, things that have wandered in, or were brought in for weird purposes.

You can jump start the list by writing: 2 Undead, 2 Humanoids, 2 Monsters.

About 50% of your table should be able to communicate, and at least one of them should be big enough to demand the players run from it.

Example:

  1. One of the paladins (d3): Martos / Vixos / Teraia
  2. A ghost in need of flesh.
  3. A skull, promising the secret location of treasure if it is taken out. The paladins will be enraged if you've taken a skull.
  4. A bone abomination, shambling through the halls.
  5. A loud little girl, here to tell the paladins about a "wicked witch" that "ate her sister," 50% chance that's the real story. She will run into danger.
  6. A creeping black ooze, egged on to malice by the spirits of the dead.

Layout

  1. Draw 3 large intersecting circles, these are general pathways.
  2. Draw 20 small circles along the pathways. These are rooms.
  3. Mark 3-4 pathways as Secret (S), Locked (L), or Blocked (B).
  4. Mark 2-3 elevation changes.
  5. Number the rooms in a sensible order.
  6. On the stocking list created earlier, note the room number next to the contents.

It will look something like this:

You can straighten it out if you like, but this is sufficient.

Checklist

In general, every dungeon should contain at least one of each:

  1. Something that can change the players in a unique way.
  2. Someone to talk to and bargain with.
  3. 1-2 Spell Scrolls for the Wizard.
  4. Undead for the Cleric.
  5. A big but winnable fight for the Fighter.
  6. A hidden treasure for the Thief.
  7. A fight that must be run from.
  8. In XP-for-GP systems, enough GP to level the party up, spread throughout the dungeon in the form of coins and large artifacts.

The Event Dice

When you consider the standard encounter dice, I like laying out the d6 as follows:

  1. Encounter
  2. Sign - Can be followed to an encounter.
  3. Event

That "event" slot is often tied to a short list of 6 events, each of which happen in sequential order, are obvious to the party, and get progressively more interesting.

In our example dungeon, we could say:

  1. The whole complex feels warmer.
  2. Every candle and torch ignites, including a few sconces on the wall.
  3. A set of eyes appear in the nearest flame, and a grinning mouth, then disappears. The complex grows hotter still.
  4. The ground begins to shake.
  5. The eyes and mouth reappear in the flame. a mocking, sickly-sweet voice says, "Still here? Better run like, well, like hell."
  6. The dungeon is absorbed into Hell, as its caretakers are no longer able to care for it. Good luck escaping now, that will be so much paperwork.

Final Polish

Your dungeon is now completely playable, good job!

For the final polish, consider:

A Playable PDF

Here's This Little Corner of Hell, if you want a PDF of just the example dungeon to see something more-or-less complete all together.

#Referee