In my last post I talked about my plans to populate my #dungeon23 megadungeon almost entirely through random tables, and how most of those tables would be suggested by the results of other tables. Today I want to think through some of the more high level concepts I want to be playing around with--it’s time to break a dungeon down into its component parts, so we can start figuring out what fun stuff we can do with them.
So, because this is a megadungeon, there are a number of concepts inherently baked into it. . .
Rooms: This is what we’re keying one of per day
Treasure: Why do players even come here
Monsters/NPCs: Who do they interact with?
Traps/Tricks/Specials: How does stuff get weird and dangerous?
This list probably looks familiar to anyone with experience designing for B/X--these four things are almost the atomic elements of a dungeon crawl. Some of these imply larger sets that they’re a member of:
Levels: This is what we’re making one of per month. These sort rooms by difficulty and, to some extent, theme.
Zones: Thematic subsections of levels. I think the original #dungeon23 post said they were planning on making each week into a zone. These should make the rooms make more sense next to each other.
Factions: Some (most) NPCs should be members of larger factions. Factions are great for magnifying the effects of player actions--if they can befriend one NPC, that gives them a foot in the door with all their buddies. Treasure and Traps can also flow out of Factions.
There are also some more conceptual questions that apply to just about everything in the dungeon:
Why is this here? On a, like, narrative level.
What are its relationships to other elements of the dungeon?
Why is this fun for the players to run across?
What themes of the dungeon does it reflect and elaborate on?
What unanswered questions about the dungeon could this provide the answer to?
When I start building out procedures for populating rooms, I want those procedures to be more about giving me inspiration than being mindless rules I need to follow. It’s easy to fall into a rut when you have to key 365 rooms in a row, so prompts that shove me into unexpected directions are going to be vital. This means I’m, unlike many table-based dungeon creation procedures I’ve seen, planning on having my tables be more about these conceptual questions like “what themes does this room embody” than concrete things like “how many doors are in this room”--although there will be plenty of that, as well.
I also want there to be some continuity between rooms using these questions. Whenever I key a room I’ll think of what themes it embodies that I want to see more of and then add them to a list. Whenever I roll a room in the future that starts from a thematic seed, I’ll then roll on that list of themes for their zone/level and use that as an initial departure point for brainstorming. Same with when I roll up a NPC--each faction will have its own list of themes/traits that I use when coming up with fun NPCs. That way I should be able to keep zones/levels/encounters feeling thematically distinct despite being randomly generated.
So, what might this look like in practice? Let’s take a shot at an imaginary room on level, say, 5.
Step One: Basic Pacing Shit
Dungeons are full of monsters, traps, treasure, etc, but all those things need to be proportioned and paced out. The balance between hazards and rewards is close enough to a dungeon’s core activity loop that figuring out a room’s general contents comes first. I’m using this handy BD&D table to figure out what’s in a room for now, but might switch to other methods on other levels or zones.
Step Two: Procedure Picking Procedure
Different procedures have different strengths and weaknesses. If I always start from the same place I’m going to develop blind spots. I want to build different rooms from different start points. For each room, roll once on the Themes table you’ve built for the current Zone, and then once on the following table.
1: Roll one additional time on the Themes table for the room’s Zone.
2: The room has something to do with the dominant faction of this Zone.
3: Roll a random faction from this Level--this room has some relation to them.
4: Roll on the table of Ideas had for cool stuff.
5: Roll on the table of Unanswered Questions about the dungeon and try to answer it with this room
6: Roll on the table of Player Problems & Opportunities.
More on what these tables all actually look like next time.
Step Three: Key the Room
With this you have three points of inspiration to get you started: room contents type, a theme, and one other concept. I find that this is the perfect amount of prompting to get me to make some really weird and unexpected things. If you’re ever left staring at the results without a plan, just roll up another Theme--they’re great because they cut down the possibility space a ton while still being super open-ended.
At this point you just write out a first draft for the room. Try to find the overlap between all the concepts you rolled that still feels like one coherent idea and makes sense in the dungeon’s larger context.
Step Four: Unanswered Questions & Theme Updates
Odds are good that whatever idea you came up with raises a bunch of new questions, possibilities, and ideas up in your mind. Where does this Owlbear find food? Who is this Cultist a worshiper of? If this is a mad sculptor, where are their sculptures? Who killed this corpse? Take as many of these questions as you can think of and throw them all onto the Unanswered Questions table to serve as inspiration for future rooms. Likewise, if this room answered any standing Unanswered Questions you can remove them from the list (if you want--some are fun to let trigger multiple times).
Similarly, think of all the Themes about this room you think are interesting that aren’t already on your Themes table, then just add them to the table. You just keyed an Ossuary where the bones are staged into morality lesson tableaus? Toss “Bones”, “Morbid Tableaus”, “Morality Tales”, and “Tone-Deaf Patronization” onto your Themes list for the Zone/Level/etc. Get some thematic through-lines pumping through your dungeon!
And that’s my planned process! I’m sure it’ll evolve a lot as it hits actual practice, but that’ll be part of the fun of this all. I’m pretty excited to get started.
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