Hi Everyone,
This time around we’re starting another little mini-series. This one is all about “making your own dungeon.” This one will be a bit more free-form than my usual posts, as I’m researching and thinking on these as we go along, so this should hopefully be an interesting ride and a learning experience for all of us. 🙂
The first thing to consider is the purpose of your dungeon. Most dungeons were built for a specific purpose, as they’re too expensive to just build on a whim (with a few exceptions). The two most common reasons are a) to keep something safe, or b) to keep the rest of the world safe from something. In effect this works a bit like a treasure vault vs. a prison – both feature locked doors, but for very different reasons. This is an important thing to establish first, as it will determine all your choices from there on, such as the size and types of rooms, the doors, and locks, etc.
So let’s MAKE a dungeon at the same time. 🙂 All the dungeon related choices will be marked in BOLD and ITALICS to make sure it’s easier to follow.
I’m going to let the dice gods decide. 01-50= Vault, 51-100 = prison style. And with a roll of 91, we get that it should be a prison of some sort.
The next question is of course WHAT is inside the dungeon? What is it that it’s trying to contain or keep safe? If it’s a prisoner, it has to be someone exceptionally dangerous or notorious. And if it’s an item of some sort, then it must be something valuable or dangerous (or perhaps all of the above). This next choice determines at least partially what the size of the dungeon should be, specifically the corridors. After all, whatever it is, had to be put inside it after the dungeon was built. As our dungeon is keeping something imprisoned, we now need to determine what this is. So we need to choose something for that – in order to make sure that we keep this interesting, I’m going for a classic: a Minotaur. This one was a chieftain who led a barbarian horde against several towns and sacked them. The people there did not believe in the death sentence, so they confined him to a dungeon. This ensures that it’s a relatively low-level threat (for PF2, a Minotaur is Creature 4; for 5e it’s a Challenge 3).
Minotaurs are of course notorious for their strength, and their ability to navigate a maze, so a dungeon designed to keep one of these in check will need to have strong doors and walls, and somehow neutralize their ability to remember the layout of the dungeon. Furthermore, the corridors must be at least 10 feet wide, to have gotten it down there. So we’re going to take that into account. Furthermore, we can determine that the locks need to be strong, but they don’t necessarily need to be difficult to pick, as a minotaur is unlikely to have the ability to unlock those. Finally, there are going to be a couple of choke points, that can slow down a charging minotaur, but where it can squeeze through if necessary.
Now, of course, it’s time to look at WHO built the dungeon. That will determine how difficult it is to navigate (based on their intelligence – smarter creatures are more likely to make something intricate and difficult to navigate), and what sort of traps and hazards it might have (one built by kobolds or goblins are likely to be full of simple traps, while one built by a master wizard will likely focus heavily on magical traps and things like areas with reversed gravity and so on). It also determines what sort of light level or considerations a dungeon might have – one built by creatures with darkvision (like a dwarf) probably won’t have much light, since they can see just fine – but they’re not cruel, so there might be light for those areas where a prisoner or visitor might stay. One built by drow is unlikely to have ANY natural light sources – whereas one built by humans will likely feature some sort of light all the way (lantern or torch sconces for those who build without the benefit of magic, probably magical spells for those who have access to them).
For our dungeon, I’m going to say that the ones who built the dungeon are the people that the minotaur attacked. They’re simple folk, with no access to magic, and since they’d rather imprison than kill, any traps and hazards that THEY have left will be non-lethal and designed to incapacitate (please note that I emphasized THEY, as other creatures might have moved in since).
That’s it for this week though folks. Next week, we dive into what has happened to the dungeon since, and we’ll start looking into building the thing itself. 😊
Kim Frandsen
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