Step Two, The Dungeon

    In my post last week we created the hex map you see here. This week we are going to breakdown creating a dungeon in hex 2,4 with my stocking methods that incorporate some homerules I play with. I use this download GridMapper and will be using it for this walkthrough and explanation. The first step is determining the size of the dungeon. I want the dungeon to be large enough to get players from level 1 to 3, so I'll want two floors. I know my players can clear ~10 rooms in one session, with that in mind we can design this to last about three sessions with 30 rooms. 

Now that we have an idea on how many rooms we need we can get our grid started. A simple hallway would make a boring dungeon, so you'll often hear the advice of "jaquay the dungeon" which is to add loops. If you want the history and a much better explanation check out The Alexandrian. In short, add loops.

Now we have a good base, Time to add more rooms. 

More rooms! More loops!

You will notice I added a few hallways that lead to a dead end room. This is an example of how to "Barnacle" your dungeon. Dead ends offer places for the players to rest if needed, perhaps with an illusion spell covering the door since they will be at the mercy of wandering monster checks. They also offer places to spring a trap on a lured enemy. I've had players tie two opposing doors together trapping the monsters inside both rooms! At this point our dungeon has 23 rooms, so we'll need seven more, See the big room in the top left? That will be where they all go using a "Room Cluster" which is a bunch of rooms sharing thin walls. Room clusters are very difficult to map and multiply mistakes quickly, but rooms hidden within are easy to spot once mapped out by the players.  

Our room cluster is finished, I've added doors marked by a box, Locked doors marked by a double box, and secret doors marked by an "S". After doing this I will mark each room with a number and begin keying the dungeon. We'll start by rolling on my stocking table, a single d6 per room is all it takes, allowing a handful of d6 to stock entire wings of a dungeon in one roll.

1. Monster, Treasure

2. Monster

3. Empty, Treasure

4. Empty

5. Trap, Treasure

6. Special

With this table half the rooms will have Treasure, a third will be empty, a third will have monsters, and a third will have some kind of non-combat interaction.

 1. Trap, Treasure      16. Empty, Treasure

 2. Monster, Treasure   17. Empty, Treasure

 3. Trap, Treasure      18. Trap, Treasure

 4. Empty               19. Empty, Treasure

 5. Monster, Treasure   20. Empty

 6. Empty               21. Empty, Treasure

 7. Empty               22. Monster

 8. Empty, Treasure     23. Trap, Treasure

 9. Monster             24. Special

10. Empty, Treasure     25. Empty, Treasure

11. Trap, Treasure      26. Monster, Treasure

12. Special             27. Monster, Treasure

13. Monster, Treasure   28. Monster

14. Empty, Treasure     29. Empty

15. Trap, Treasure      30. Trap, Treasure

If we count the rolls up we see; five rooms have a monster and treasure, three rooms have a monster, eight rooms are "empty" with treasure, five rooms are empty, SEVEN rooms are trapped, and two of the rooms have a special feature. On average we should have expected five of each, so this floor is going to be heavy on traps and unguarded rooms with treasure in it and light on the actual monsters inside. 20 rooms will have treasure in them, including trapped treasure. Now that we know how many rooms have treasure in them we can do a little math. You can take the expected party size and approximate experience requirement for them to level up and work out how much treasure you want in each room.

(Party Size * XP Needed) / Rooms with Treasure = Treasure per Room.

In my game all characters need 500 xp to level up from first level and we'll be designing this dungeon for a party of four.  I don't expect my players to find every room either, they will miss some secret rooms or lose xp to dead characters. To account for this I increase the treasure per room about 50%

(4 * 500) / 20 = Treasure per Room

2000 / 20 = Treasure per Room

100 Treasure per Room

Adjusted for the missed and lost xp we'll plan on 150 xp per room. Lets mark our map again, this time with colored rooms to get a clearer picture of what the layout is. 

    We can see a pretty good spread of results. Most of our traps are in dead end rooms, with two along the only entrances to our cluster area. One trap is behind a locked door. That is sure to be annoying! Since I write dungeons for personal use, I write my notes plainly, with the only things I need for that room. I will sometimes write bullet points on how the dungeon looks, sounds, or smells if I don't think I'll be running it very soon. To keep this post from being a long mess, In another post I'll key the dungeon.