Finder’s Archive – Dungeon Creation (Part 6)

And greetings again, in the sixth installment of Dungeon Creation. This should (but we’ll see by the end) be the second to last episode of this, with next time showing you the final product of our efforts. 😊

(Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5)

So last time we left off on an important note:

Treasure!

Now I’m not going to talk about the coins and how MUCH treasure you should adjudicate here because that varies by the system – and coins are easy for any GM to sort. No, here we are going to talk about the special ones, the magical ones, and the art objects.

Art objects are a special little hatred of mine as a GM because rolling them up always means that you have to come up with what they look like unless you simply go “artwork worth X gold pieces. But that is boring, so I’m a big fan of the dungeons providing artwork that FITS the place, and preferably the campaign.

So, what FITS in a jail/prison dungeon? Well, that’s a good question. Most likely any treasure would be found in the warden’s office, so it’d either belong to him, or to any important prisoners that have been put here, and which was never retrieved. So here we go:

A gold commemorative service plaque for outstanding services mounted on mahogany.
A ceremonial sword and scales, used in court when showing guilt (silver sword) or innocence (gold scales).
A number of scented candles, incense in small parchment envelopes, and an empty cold iron censor.
And of course a number of coins, commensurate with the system and the level of the heroes.

And then there are the magic items:

Here I generally advise thinking about what fits the heroes, the campaign, and the location. Since we don’t know the heroes or the campaign here, I’m going to choose a couple of examples that fit the location instead.

A few healing potions, located in the guard station, for use during uprisings.
A shield+1, for use by the head guard. (Both ceremonial and useful, likely found on the corpse of a guard)
A mace of terror for subduing unruly prisoners more easily
A chime of opening used by a group of adventurers that arrived before the current heroes, for accessing one of the locked areas (potentially the armory)
A gem of brightness, used for escorting visitors throughout the complex. Found near the entrance of the dungeon, where it’s been left on a shelf.

And all of this concludes all the things that go into the making of a dungeon. So next time around, it’ll be time for the final product. I should have this on both the website itself, as well as a downloadable PDF for you all. 😊

So next week it’ll be time for the Donjon of the Horned Lord! (And before you ask, yes that is a play on both dungeon, keep, and prison, as well as the minotaur originally incarcerated here. 😊 )

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Kim Frandsen

40 years old, and a gamer since I was 13. These days I freelance as a writer for various companies (currently Fat Goblin Games, Flaming Crab Games, Outland Entertainment, Paizo, Raging Swan Games, Rusted Iron Games, and Zenith Games), I've dipped my hands into all sorts of games, but my current "go-to" games are Pathfinder 2, Dungeon Crawl Classics and SLA Industries. Unfortunately, while wargaming used to be a big hobby, with wife, dog and daughter came less time.

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