Category: dungeon design

Dungeon Design Training Wheels

This is an idea so brilliant, I wish I lacked the morals to claim it as my own. The power of Appendix A never ceases to amaze. Give any reasonably intelligent kid a couple run throughs of the Dungeon of Rando Death to Randos, and they will assuredly start...

Dungeon Design and Surprising Yourself

I’m sorry, what’s that, Gary? Don’t I tried this at home kids. In the Wolflands, while delving the local megadungeon, our intrepid heroes ran into three encounters with orc patrols. Those kinds of numbers indicate something interesting is going on. To explain the streaky nature of things, we decided...

The Greatest Dungeon Ever Designed

This is what peak dungeon design looks like. We made this dungeon on the fly using Appendix A of the greatest RPG book ever written, and it lasted for a solid three sessions of live play.  We had parties of ten, then six, then nine delve this one and...

This Is Huge – Gamechanging

The full ramifications of this little fact have yet to be explored. Probably because the bulk of the D&D crowd plays linear, story-line chasing, games that think too small to include such concepts as player-created megadungeons. In Brian’s case, the dwarven faction is mining in the hopes of finding...

Cult of the Dungeongod

Castle Meatgrinder is an extension of a Lovecraftian chaos-demon-god, oozing into the mundane world.  It tempts the unwary with promises of riches and power, but hungers for only the bravest and fittest, and so guards its lucre by extruding guardians both foul and vicious.  As heroes plumb its depths,...

A Note on Random Dungeons

Long time internet based D&D dungeon designers know all about Dyson Logos and his brilliant series of dungeon geomorphs.  They also know about Dave Millar’s amazing contribution to our little hobby, Dave’s Mapper, which builds a random dungeon using geomorphs created in Dyson’s style.  The Mapper has geomorphs created by...

D&D, The Teen Paradigm

My now fifteen year old son showed me the notes that he’s drafting for the D&D campaign he is running for his friends.  It’s an interesting glimpse into one creative solution designed by a player who has played the game for years, but has never cracked open a module....

The Brass Canon’s Plunder – A One Page Dungeon Contest Entry

It’s getting to be that time of year again.  Time for the One Page Dungeon Contest. My entry this year was designed for ease of use at the table.  Most of the relevant backstory didn’t make the final cut.  Maybe it wasn’t so relevant after all.  For those who...

Under Construction – One Page Dungeon

Hey everybody, big fan of the One Page Dungeon contest here.  One of my prouder gaming moments came a few years back when Bryce, of tenfootpole.org reviewed my last entry.  He’s a cranky old bastard, and his personality shines in his many take-downs of the failures of most published work, let...

Stock These Caves

Need a natural cavern map?  Here’s one you can use:...