Using the new 5th Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide from D&D, I created a dungeon in about 10 minutes.
The book’s Appendix A might be my favorite part. In little more than 10 pages, it lays out random tables that allow you to create an entire dungeon – and stock that dungeon with monsters, treasure, traps and tricks – very quickly.
Using some dice and a pencil, this is what I sketched out…
For starters, here is the map of the dungeon, which I determined would be an old temple.
Pretty quickly, I rolled on a series of tables determining the sizes of chambers, the sizes of hallways, door types and chamber contents. There are also a series of tables for chamber purposes (based on what kind of dungeon you have), the state of the chamber, monsters, hazards, traps, obstacles, tricks, treasures, noises, furnishings and items.
I numbered each chamber in a roughly top-to-bottom, left-to-right fashion and labeled the contents of each room. Let’s go room by room, shall we?
Room 1 – A large dining room is the first room the characters enter. The room’s contents are water damaged.
Room 2 – Through an unlocked, wooden door is a wide and winding chambers that leads to a conjuring room used to summon extra planar creatures. The room contains holy writings and some summoned monsters. A room in the corner contains a torture chamber that smells like urine.
Room 3 – A temple used for rituals that’s full of spider-webs. The adventurers may find a dust of disappearance hidden under an altar.
Room 4 – A smaller dining room for the temple’s high priests. It’s well furnished and has a rack of vestments against a far wall.
Room 5 – It’s a kitchen inhabited by a monster that has gathered a small hoard of treasure. (A secret door leads to the torture chamber off of room 2.)
Room 6 – This is a large banquet room used for celebrations and high holy days. It is in pristine condition, unlike the rest of the chamber. It contains a large monster, 3 expensive pieces of art worth 50 gp, a potion of healing and a potion of climbing.
Room 7 – A long hallway with columns down the center has two hallways leading off. One to the left and one to the right. A hidden pit opens beneath the characters when they step into the room. If they don’t spot the pit, it opens up to reveal a black pudding at the bottom. (Oof.)
Room 8 – A very large workshop used to create religious items and weapons used for the temple’s clerics. It is occupied by a priest who has slain the others that were in the room before. He is attempting to conquer the temple and use it for his own purposes.
Room 9 – Behind a secret door, this room is a robing room containing ceremonial outfits, a statue and a prayer rug. The rug animates when it is stepped on.
Room 10 – Another room similar to room 9, this is locked behind a barred stone door. There are more prayer items in here.
Room 11 – This is a crypt for the high priests of the temple. A glyph or warding warns the adventurers that it is heavily guarded. A trap of spears sit near a mural on the wall and the trap triggers if adventurers stop to study it. Monsters dominate this room. In it, adventurers find a secret path out of the temple, a spell scroll, a potion of invulnerability, magic arrows, an earth elemental gem and a potion of healing.
Boom.
Pretty simple. I love this because any DM in need of a quick dungeon could sketch this out before game night if they were pressed for time. OR they could create the dungeon in real time as the players explored.
Yeah buddy! Nice demonstration!