Synopsis

Deadly Dungeon Doors by Dreadful Dungeons, written by Glen Cooper.

In this brand new Dungeon Masters Guild Supplement to Dungeon’s and Dragons 5th Edition, you will find everything a DM needs to easily create some of the most intricate parts of an adventure that seem to get overlooked the most, mainly, the doors involved in the dungeon. We are not just talking about your same old brown wooden door, with hinges, and a lock or a trap. We are talking of intricate themed doors, doors made from exotic materials, intricate locks, hidden secreted doors and how they are hidden, ect ect.

And that is not all, this supplement puts all of this at your fingertips at ease and expands upon the rules for creating these doors as found in the 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide. Whether you need the Armor Class, Hit Points, Spot(Perception) Checks for Hidden Doors, Trap Difficulty Class, Damage Type, Saving Throws, etc, it is all there in one place. The author even goes into some new easy to use rule variants for your doors plus expanded Lore about these doors to give your dungeons, crypts, or castles the extra flavor needed to make every adventure more memorable to your players. The description of the product is below.

“Every cold, dark, haunted, death-trap DUNGEON needs doors. With 48 pages of content, this supplement provides you with the means to randomly generate in excess of 6 MILLION unique door encounters including LOCKS, TRAPS, SECRET/HIDDEN doors. Plus you will own random tables that give to you over 80 pre-generated doors in 5 themed dungeons types; like Treasure Vaults, Tombs and Mines. Be inspired by THE most feared Legendary Deadly Dungeon Doors ever discovered. Learn of their histories and the lore which has customarily been passed down from adventuring group to adventuring group.”

First Impressions

My honest first impressions when I was looking over the topic of the material was probably what most people think. “How hard is it to build a door in a game or come up with ideas for doors?” Well to my surprise (as I haven’t really taken all too much thought into my own games at designing intricate doors or using the DMG to do so, I know I know shame on me) it is a lot more complicated than one might think. The author does a great job showing you all the jumping around you would have to do to create one door in your dungeon. We are talking about 3-4 jumps of 100’s of pages for each! And that won’t even generate half of the amount of doors you can find in this supplement. As i delved deeper, I thought to myself; wow, how easily this would now be to make more awesome stuff to introduce to my players that I never even thought of before nor would probably take the time to produce.

An Example pulled from one of the tables in the pre-generated doors table for a Volcano Dungeon: (FYI, Toughness is a new rule variant in the book for AC and calculating other things like HP)

Giant Crystal Door – Crystal, strong (Toughness 25), giant size (Strength DC 15 to open), Falling block trap (see table F1), Spot DC 25, Disarm DC 25, Damage Severity – Dangerous, Save DC 12, Attack +6.

Pro’s

Very easy to use supplement and easy to understand new rule variants.

Tables/Options for themed doors to roll on if you are crafting the following types of dungeons (Death Trap, Mines, Tombs, Crypts, Treasure Holds, or Volcanoes).

More random tables to make a completely Unique Door with over 6 Million different varieties!

Creative hand drawn artwork provided from the author himself.

Amazing Legendary Doors with their own lore, stats, and of course Artwork provided.

It includes easy to use Flow Charts and provides sheets for writing and keeping your created doors for use in future games. You could essentially make a stockpile of doors to pull in at any time.

Even provides a 1 Page document to print out to help your Rogue learn the appropriate steps and tools that could be used in dealing with any Deadly Door encountered. With a fun acronym of S.L.I.D.E like something out of an office training. 🙂

Con’s

It was pretty hard to find much fault with this. It is well thought out and descriptive and works with ease.

Advertises itself as a Player’s and DM’s Guide. I would say that this is really ONLY for a Dungeon Master.

Would not be good for every Dungeon Master. Mainly for DM’s that have no need or interest for making things potentially harder or deadlier for players.(Everything is customize-able so it can be scaled however though)

Overall Impressions

I would first say that this is a Must Have for the Dungeon Master that takes special interest in two things:

Making their adventures memorable and including different elements to the game. Doing the above with ease of using random tables or picking and choosing from a list to make their games flow.

Is this supplement for everyone? Of course not, some Dungeon Masters might just want to continue using doors the way they normally would. “You have come to a door. It is locked.” Rather than, “You approach a door made out of crystal with ornate steel hinges and door handle in the shape of a dragon. It is indeed locked, but you do not see a keyhole to pick it and it seems too solid for your strongest barbarian to smash through. How do you proceed?”

But one thing I do know for certain, that I will be using these elements in all of my games to come. The author even informed me that if this project of his turns out well, we may even see a guide to making random Rooms or Corridors.

Show me where to find this! Now!

You can find this amazing tool on the Dungeon Master’s Guild website HERE.

It includes the printable 49 Page PDF

Also for more Legendary Dungeon Doors, you can even become a Patron to Glen’s Patreon Page HERE.