Last week, I wrote a lengthy treatise on the history of megadungeons–and what role they might play in your current TTRPG campaign. It’s my sense that Game Masters want most sessions to have a decent balance of the big three: (1) roleplay, (2) exploration, and (3) combat. But if you’re delving through a 23-level dungeon, how do you keep it from being an unending slog of combat? As a result, megadungeons just don’t seem so relevant in most games these days.
But, as I argued last week, why not design your own megadungeon in the same spirit as Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax?
Arneson wanted his players to engage in a more wargamey experience in overland opposition to invading forces. His players just wanted to go further into the dungeon. So he had to add more to the dungeon as they went.
Gygax seemed more excited about the dungeon as a setting. Week after week, the dungeon was intentionally the game. Each week they would arrive and continue where they had left off on a dungeon floor–or they would descend to the next.
I’m arguing that you should try the same in your weekly game:
A village…with a dungeon nearby…
So many of the early D&D adventures consisted of a settlement and a dungeon. In the settlement, PCs can rest, gather resources, and gain information. And then, in the dungeon, you fight, explore, gain treasure (and XP!). We see this in The Village of Hommlet and Keep on the Borderlands. Interestingly, the Saltmarsh series functionally did the same thing, except over a stretch of three adventures: each module added a dungeon.
It’s fairly normal for home games to have a key safe zone or settlement from which players branch out. But here’s the unique thing that I’m suggesting: make a dungeon that is (1) optional and (2) progressive.
An optional dungeon: one principle of OSR gameplay that I appreciate is respecting and inviting player agency. A part of that agency is giving players the freedom to play what they want to play. You create an environment that they then engage and experience. I’m suggesting that you put a dungeon in your game world that–if players want to do some dungeon delving, then can! But if they want to do something else in the next session, no problem! It’s not going anywhere.
Now, of course, I encourage you to make it matter! If the dungeon is not cleared, perhaps nearby farms or shops get vandalized by unchecked monsters. Or perhaps, as the players clear the dungeon of treasures, angered denizens come looking for them. Optional doesn’t mean disconnected from the whole. It just means that you’re not forcing players into six weeks of delving a megadungeon. But when they want to go back, they can!
A progressive dungeon: as Arneson and Gygax’s players increased in level and ability, more levels were added to the dungeon! In some ways, this is not dissimilar to video game design. The original Legend of Zelda had different dungeon “levels” that increased in difficulty, as you grew in health and abilities. Those levels just happened to be in different locations, rather than stacked on top of each other!
So just stack them on top of each other in your game! When your players are nearing second level (or the equivalent in a non-leveling game), lo and behold! They find a secret door or a new passage that leads downward into the depths! What I love about this idea is that you’re not on the hook to design a ten-level dungeon before you can ever start. Just make levels as you need to…or want to!
But why would you ever want to design a dungeon floor?
How I learned to love dungeon design
I always found the idea of designing my own dungeon daunting. I tried the random dungeon generators in the AD&D 1e Dungeon Masters Guide and the 2014 5th Edition Dungeon Masters Guide. Both of them led to overwhelmingly large and overcomplicated dungeons. I tried just doing it from my imagination and it began with the tyranny of the blank page…and ended with a sense of not knowing how to end. This all changed with the release of Yochai Gal’s Cairn 2e Warden’s Guide (insanely and generously, free here). Now, designing dungeon levels has become my favorite solo RPG!
The Warden’s Guide covers a lot of Dungeon Design theory that is definitely worth reading. That’s where you get the big ideas like (1) who built this and what was its original purpose, (2) what happened to it, and (3) who’s using it now. But for this blog, I want to get down to the mechanics of building out a floor that Gal gives us in the section “Build a Dungeon” (you’ll have to scroll down or Ctrl+F on this page):
- First, he has you roll 6-20 d6 on a blank page of paper, each of them becoming a room in the dungeon.
- Depending on which number is showing on each die helps determine what’s happening in the room. Gal uses the following “Dungeon Die Drop Table”:
- 1 – Monster
- 2-3 – Lore
- 4 – Special
- 5-6 – Trap
- Going on from there, you populate the rooms and connect the rooms, using a mixture of clear, blocked, and secret paths.
There’s a lot more to read in the Warden’s Guide and I can’t commend it enough. For my recent dungeon, I wanted more monsters than lore and traps. So I tweaked the table to fit the tone of my dungeon level. But if I want a later level to be more trappy/puzzly, then I’ll shuffle the numbers again.
It’s a shockingly fun, quick, and easy way to build a dungeon. I’ve recently designed two different dungeons–and it took thirty minutes to build out each. In fact, it took longer to actually convert the final product over to a digital map using Dungeonscrawl. And again, while you can purchase Cairn 2e products, all the rules and procedures are available on the Cairn website. So it’s definitely worth trying
What’s next?
So I’ve got several dungeons I’m working on right now. For my Greyhawk multi-level megadungeon, I’ll probably build out a second and third floor (the first is complete). I’ve actually rolled one up for an upcoming Star Wars RPG. And I’m putting together one to run in AD&D 1st Edition at an upcoming in-person convention for my Discord, RPGuild. I love that Cairn’s system is so flexible and useful for any TTRPG.
Have any of you tried Cairn’s dungeon design procedure? Or maybe you have a preferred method? Sound off in the comments! I’d love to hear what works for you–or what you plan to do next!
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