Dungeon Craft

Dungeons are an integral part of the table top role-play experience. With a dungeon I created as example, we will go over important steps to dungeon creation. It isn't perfect but neither is anybody's homebrew custom dungeon, and it will work for this article.

PDF: Wraithrest

"Within a dungeon, adventurers are constrained by walls and doors around them, but in the wilderness, adventurers can travel in almost any direction they please. Therein lies the key difference between dungeon and wilderness; it's much easier to predict where the adventuring party might go in the dungeon because the options are limited- less so in the wilderness. " - Crawford, pg. 99

Dungeons aren't necessarily linear in the sense of players having only a single option but more that it is a confined location as the above quote suggests. Dungeons can be gigantic or miniscule, but the sense of confinement must persist. The simplest way to do this is having the party underground in a cave system, or fighting in a ruined castle. The party can have choice in where they go, but there will be numerous hostile creatures along the way to impede them.

That's another important aspect of Dungeons, monsters. The original Dungeons and Dragons focused solely on the dungeoneering, kicking down a door to fight what ever is in the room. Modern slang for those player types is "Murder Hobo", which is what most people starting out are, someone whose character is there only to kill things and grab gold no additional role-play beyond that.

Despite the term for such a common and traditional play style, it can actually be really fun. I also think its important to giving that feeling of confinement that dungeons are supposed to have. If there was only a single ogre in a massive cave system, it would be boring, nor have any real tension or suspense. The feeling of "my character could die" or "something might jump out any moment" is very important.

A single ogre in a small cave though is more confining in a literal sense. The party would need to fight a 9 ft tall humanoid creature with raw brute strength, in a tiny area. Or that same large cave system can be used with various goblins, orcs, or other weaker monsters in the way of the players and the ogre is at the end. Now the confinement isn't only geographical it's simply perceived. The party might run across forks or side passages to their target, yet the cave system is heavily populated with enemies. This removes their ability of security and safety. Dungeons are meant to feel dangerous.

Before we get deeper into this, know what your purpose is. Not just the purpose and background of the dungeon, which is important too, but why are the players going there? Is it a small side distraction for extra xp, is it for a one off session meant to have elaborate traps and riddles? If you don't know your group well enough to have a rough idea of what they'd like to play then ask them, or do the dungeon you would want to play. Wraithrest was meant to be a learning experience.

It needed to be something that encouraged the players to think about their fights. Previous sessions had warm up fights. Enemies with custom attacks and differing terrain type and elevation, along with enemies that behaved like players the same level of the party. It was all leading up to the dungeon which was meant to challenge them in new ways. After having done the dungeon it provided a tone change in how the group viewed combat and gave foreshadowing to future adventures as well.

Page 2 of the PDF, is the first big fight. It is against an Arch-Necromancer, a custom enemy I made, and the first boss the party faces. I call them boss fights because I have a history of my dungeons being the ones in World of Warcraft, so particularly tough or key enemies I simply call bosses.

My usual group was sent here to get a particular item from the ruins inside the catacombs. The only foreshadowing that something might happen was of course the backstory on page 1, if they did a history check or asked locals in the nearest town. Locals, and their patron, state that some mysterious monks went to ruin to consecrate. The monks get supplies and communicate through a paladin.

Figure 1: Cemetery Map

Wraithrest has a massive cemetery on its outskirts from when it was an asylum for plague victims. It is also in dense fog. The cemetery is a lower elevation than the castle/monastic complex so they can see Wraithrest in the distance, but not the area in between.

As always I will use examples from my Saturday D&D group and refer to them by character names for anonymity. Human Female Barbarian Olga the Dainty, Human Male Fighter Bruce Nightvale, Human Male Cleric Father Marks, and Halfling Female Rogue Sharp, all entered the graveyard leading ahead of their ox driven supply wagon.

Now the party is out in the open, how do you create confinement. They don't know they're characters don't know they're in a dungeon, and the only player that knows for certain is Marks who helped me make it. (Note: You can ask for ideas or help from your players if you want to make a dungeon. They're the ones interacting with it; don't tell them everything though to keep it surprising.)

I'm a bit lazy so I like to have the players' minds create the sense of confinement. I described an unnatural fog obscuring their vision, with strings of light blue that seemed to have a muted glow. The players didn't do any arcana rolls to see if they knew what was going on, though none of them had proficiency in that skill either. (Arcana is lore on magic and magical items). What this was meant to do was create a sense of unknown. After all I feel restricted when traveling through heavy fog, and I think that's part of the reason so many dungeons are expected to have no lighting. It might not make one feel as claustrophobic as narrow cave walls, be certainly claustroed.

Now the players feel like something is up. They are in a region known as the Erie Marsh, known for all sorts of nasty creatures like tribal humans, orcs, bug monsters, dangerous wildlife, and so on. They are also in a spooky mass cemetery with limited visibility heading toward a creepy building complex, with a disturbed history behind it. They're doing perception checks to ensure nothing sneaks up on them. Not long after that they see a silhouette in the distance.

Bruce and Sharp stick to the wagon to protect their loot and supplies. Father Marks does his classic conversation starter "I roll persuasion and ask 'Have you heard of our lord and savior Mishakal." He rolls a 19 with modifier. The humanoid silhouette in the fog moves bit yet no response. Sharp is feeling very uncomfortable and does a perception roll again. Olga the Dainty though gets to go first as she rolled to attack the figure right as Marks was talking. The barbarian rushes forward and obliterates. . . a skeleton. Sharp and Bruce don't actually see what the silhouette is, just hear the hit.

With that hit the strings of light blue fog that had been intermingled in the air glow much brighter and everyone hears footsteps, a lot of them, along with blue glowing eyes in the fog. Now I have created that sense of confinement by putting in a lot of weak monsters, my modified skeletons. They can't do much damage but when 20 slings are used on a character with even 18 AC, like Marks, some of those will hit. But the party manages to quickly do away with the skeletons, after all the party is at 4th level and more than capable of killing these enemies. Then the skeletons start reassembling and more of the creatures start coming.

I have created a sense of confinement through shear squalor from the amount of enemies. Much like in any zombie movie, the area has a lot of space yet there is little maneuverability for the party without being in immediate danger. Sharp does her perception roll and notices that there is a chanting in the distance. Using insight she figures out a general direction. I also let her combine arcana rolls and her thieves cant ability to deduce its a necromantic spell being uttered.

This created suspense too as the party had to get to the Arch-Necromancer, but there was little visibility and a horde of undead in the way. The party had also only ever fought 1 undead before and no one believed them, and brushed them off as crazy adventurer boasts. (homebrew world has necromancy being believed extinct). Now this thing that had been pushed in the backs of their minds was all around them.The party managed to win they used spells and ranged attacks to clear a way for their wagon to plow through and reach the Arch-Necromancer where they dog piled on him and ended the spell. Now comes loot.

For your dungeons you can have a loot table out to randomly roll, just state whatever armor and weapons the enemy had on them, and/or specific items you made. This dungeon's bosses all had items specific for each party member where they would get 3 new strong magic items by the end. Thus, feeling very powerful and rewarded after such hard fights. Some magic items could break the main campaign after you implement them in a dungeon, so be ready for shenanigans if you do that.

Now come another important question. How do you build an encounter? Typically this means a fight, though one could argue puzzles and any series of difficult roll checks are encounters. At the moment we will review fighting.

Figure 2: Courtyard Map

The Dungeon Master's Guide has a table for encounters based off challenge rating. For example an ogre has a rating of 4, so it should take four level 1 players to defeat the creature. After which the provided xp for a challenge rating of 4 (300 xp) is divided equally amongst the party. Theoretically you can use that table to create whatever encounter levels you want. I say theoretically because there is the Random Number Generator of the dice being used, whatever strategy the players have, if they have magical items, or simply the fact player characters might be stronger in the current edition of the game being used.

It's still a very useful table, but it isn't meant to be dogma just guidelines for creating encounters. Another way to create interesting encounters can be traps, or terrain differences. For example maybe there are caltrops in between the party and the enemy ranged units. Now imagine those caltrops are on a ramp leading to a ledge the ranged units are on. A party member could spend a turn using acrobatics rolls to climb up the ledge, or run up the ramp and miss seeing the caltrops those getting the trap. Modifying monsters helps also. For instance Figure 2 is the courtyard fight from page 3 of the PDF. In it the Abomination, which is a custom monster, stands front and center. The ghouls are on the flanks to pin in whoever in the party distracts the abomination. The Necromancer and skeletons do ranged damage from the back. The skeletons though I don't let have sickles, only slings.

It was the same thing in the cemetery fight, some had melee weapons other had ranged. This means the enemies behave differently. In your own encounters you could also give some of the enemies different weapons or armor from the rest of their kind. It adds flavor and depth to encounter at very little stress to yourself. After all why did that kobold have ring mail armor and a war pick while the others had leather and a spear?

This goes a little into the idea of encounters appropriate to their environments. It isn't very likely for the party to find a wyvern in a catacomb, so it might break immersion in the game. It could work though, for instance a mage had an experiment go wrong and there party is fighting a  Myconid in the middle of a city.

Figure 3: Myconids Creatures of the Underdark

Because this creature doesn't fit in the environment it quickly draws attention. It could be a quick funny fight, be the starting of a new quest, or whatever else works for the group. In dungeons it's useful to have appropriate monsters. Wraithrest technically doesn't have appropriate monsters, in that the lore of the world has undead be nothing but fairytales.

This makes the whole experience stand out to the players even more. Especially considering the fight towards the end with the plot twist. It ties in well with world even though it isn't related to the current campaign the party is a part of, the item they're fetching was just an excuse to get them to Wraithrest.

There also needs to be consideration into how the map is going to be. I will provide a link HERE to a previous post with a more in-depth examination of map making. For now I'll abridge it. There are numerous ways to make a map, either digitally, by hand, and even randomized. For example here are two maps I have for Wraithrest.

Figure 4: Erie Marsh Overworld Map

Figure 5: Hand Drawn Overview of Wraithrest Exterior

The maps don't have to look great. In fact the party might not even need to see every map, just be told what is around them. After all they wouldn't know precisely which level of the dungeon they were on, and would need to map it out themselves based off what you tell them. Do what you as the DM have time for. Figure 4 is a piece of a large map I made when I had a whole winter break of nothing to do. Figure 5 was an hour long break between studying. Both worked just fine for my players.

Hopefully this page gave some insight or ideas into how to craft a dungeon. Remember it is important to know why the party is going to this dungeon and why this dungeon even exists in the world. It's environment and what enemies reside in it. What type of encounters you want the party to face?  Along with how to spice up a fight by tweaking preexisting monster, or making new ones. Not to mention how giving a feeling of confinement and tension is important to dungeons and that these can be done be literally giving less space, or metaphorically through atmosphere and story telling.

Dungeons are an integral part of table-top-role-playing.

Work Cited
Crawford, Jeremy, et al. Dungeon Master's Guide. USA: Wizards of the Coast, 2014. Print.