If you have an Android device, I highly recommend Adventuresmith. Firstly because it automates these tables and you can save and export the results, but secondly because you can create your own.
“Dungeon” generation procedures
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He was working on a second edition as well, before G+ went down, I’m not sure of the current status.
I’d like to add real quick that, while many people use the Labyrinth Move to abstract a dungeon crawl (including in the upcoming Trophy Gold by @jesseross), that was not the original intention of the move. It was originally for use in settings that would be inconvenient to map at the table, such as literal labyrinths, vast unexplored spaces, even bizarre dream journeys. I think it’s awesome people have found other uses for it—and there are many versions out there better than my original one—but it was not originally meant to stand in for a dungeon crawl.
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@Jeremy_Strandberg, it would be awesome if you could paste some links to the list of known procedures that you mention!
As for creating interesting scenarios, I’ve always been intrigued by Dungeon World’s front-design. I’ve made a variant of it for my own game Middle World, but I’m not sure about the result just yet.
Also, this approach really spoke to me: https://wizardshaw.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-world-is-room-method-for-organizing.html?m=1
And finally I guess I should mention Rickard Elimää’s Fish Tank models that has been a great source of inspiration for me (though I’m not sure if they apply to making dungeons per se): https://gnomestew.com/the-fish-tank-as-a-mystery-2/ and https://gnomestew.com/the-fish-tank-as-an-intrigue/
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At the risk of drifting this a little, anyone have any generation procedures that are specifically designed for solo (no GM) play?
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I think that the Plumb the Depths rules from @jasonlutes’ Freebooters 2E could work reasonably well for this? When I’m rolling up dungeons it feels a bit like I’m a player exploring the dungeon as I go!
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I would take a look at Ironsworn which has fairly robust rules for solo play in addition to a bunch of really good random tables (called oracles).
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The KS is over but the Indiegogo after party is just getting started for Wicked Ones, a FitD game that’s basically the RPG of Dungeon Lords.
One of its features is that you’ll create a customized region and a detailed dungeon within it. One of the stretch goals (already reached) is for a solo-mode that just produces the dungeon! It’s half the reason I backed the game.
The other half is the RPG version of Dungeon Lords.
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By the way, in case people on the thread don’t know — there’s a set of beta rules for Ironsworn Delve, which explicitly deals with dungeon adventures. I haven’t read through it yet, but it looks promising!
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Dungeon Lords is itself an abstracted boardgame version of the classic computer game Dungeon Keeper - which you can find a remake of on Steam as War for the Overworld (the hypothesised sequel to Dungeon Keeper 2 where they go above ground)
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Has anyone adapted the roguelike computer games to RPG? That said, you can use online tools and adapt them (e.g. https://donjon.bin.sh/d20/dungeon/ )
Possibly adapting some board games? https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/196401/definitive-list-soloco-op-dd-style-dungeon-hackcra
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Roguelikes consider themselves more with a valid geometry than making a fully fleshed out dungeon. For example, orginal rogue generates rooms, connects rooms, adds monsters in the generated space. Of course there is bunch of different algorithms that expoand on that and make it a more interesting map, but I don’t think it will create anything too interesting for an rpg.
If you really wanted to go this way, I would use a dice drop (e.g. Scenic Dunsmouth) on a piece of paper and have rules to what each dice mean. Then draw the rooms where the dice fell, connect them with corridors, then populate with monsters or do random monster/obstacle table. I think that would work more as a pre-game th
Long time ago I used the Wilderness of Mirrors / Wick’s Dirty dungeon approach to make a tiny game about running heists. It uses playing cards. Players draw cards and and based on the card’s suit narrate what the obstacle is. This can be tweaked into dungeons quite easily, you can even be used to make a layout (as my game was more nodes than rooms). Maybe even use it with dominoes? The game is free and available from 1km1kt if anyone wants to check it out.
Another approach is to use some dungeon generation aids, for example:
Those will do a pretty good job at creating the dungeon geometry, but need some other random tables / orcales to really flesh the dungeons out.
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The recently kickstarted A Rasp of Black Sand is an explicitly roguelike tabletop game.
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There are a few OSR products that will generate a dungeon as you go; Ruins of Undercity by Kabuki Kaiser does this. It involves lots of dice rolling to generate rooms and corridors and traps and monsters. From the same author, Castle Gargantua elaborates on that procedure with a few “set piece” areas mixed in.
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I also forgot to mention:
Dungeonmorphs (dice, cards, etc., from Inkwell Ideas) and also
The Stygian Library and The Gardens of Ynn from Dying Stylishly (Emmy Allen, I think?) are both procedural point crawl generation machines.
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Links would be so great!
Thanks for clarifying. I had convinced myself that Dungeon Lords was some sort of localized name for Dungeon Keeper, the way the first Harry Potter book is Sorcerer’s Stone in the US and Philosopher’s Stone in the UK.
This makes more sense!
Thanks @calris and @SamR for the Ironsworn mention. I am working on my own take on dungeon generation for the “Delve” supplement. It’s really more about “sites”, though, which can be a dungeon – but can also be a marshland, or dense forest, or perilous mountain pass. To create a site, you combine a theme and a domain. This gives you your overall framing for the nature of the place, along with oracles for what you encounter (features and dangers). Combined with a set of Delve moves, it seems to hang together pretty well, and gives me no-prep expeditions that mix the expected with the surprising. It’s a bit more abstract than room-to-room, though. I generally think of it as more of a montage (not dissimilar from the scenes of the fellowship navigating Moria), while occasionally zooming in for more intense sequences.
I’ve taken a look at lots of dungeon generation procedures, and it’s a really interesting area of design. Generally, I’d say I have a preference for those that are a bit more abstract, that leave more room to fill in the blanks. I’m not particularly interested in rolling up the specific features of a room, how many coins are to be found lying about, etc.
@jasoncordova will get thanks and credit in the book, because the labyrinth move was an early reference and inspiration.
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I am continually amazed at how far some of my ideas have traveled. It’s very gratifying.
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