A while back I took the plunge and finally brought The Location Crafter, a set of rules designed to create location on the fly. It was designed for mobsols like me, but I eventually found myself using its basic principles in my everyday dungeon building.

When crafting a location you need to fill out three categories: Places, Items, and Encounters. From there you can mix and match categories with each other to create areas a basic layout of the dungeon.

As an example, I’m going to be creating an Uvahtun lair (a group of fiend-worshipers in Empai Tirkosu). The dungeon will be located on the plane of dust, built on a rocky island surrounded by an ocean of quicksand.

Places. These don’t even have to be anything specific, or even proper “places” as such, as demonstrated below:

Lookout post – This is an outpost, after all: The cultists need somewhere to keep an eye on things. Living quarters – Even cultists need a place to crash. Supplies storage – Gotta keep that food somewhere. Sandstone room – Just a basic, vanilla room, no extra baggage. Ritual room – Don’t get too close, it’s dark inside, it’s where my demons hide 🎶 Prison – Sacrificial victims can be stored here.

Items. These aren’t just random items that would be part of any room: They should change the way the players interact with the room, for good or bad.

Lit candles – Useful if the whole party doesn’t have darkvision. Door – Potentially an obstacle, or a place to spring a surprise attack. Shrine – Of the evil sort, obviously. Quicksand pit – For drowning victims in, potentially. Treasure – Bling is king.

Encounters. These are monsters, traps, and NPCs that the players can encounter. I like to have a nice mix of Easy, Medium, and Hard encounters. For higher-level dungeons I would also include one or two Deadly ones.

Trap – Cultists don’t want any old person finding their treasures. 2 Cultists – ‘Nuff said. Golem – Because it wouldn’t be Empai Tirkosu if it didn’t have a little spellpunk. Spy – A slightly higher-level Uvahtun, probably the one keeping watch. Maw Demon – Every demon cult needs a mascot.

All of these can be combined, mixed, and matched to create different rooms within the dungeon, helping you shape the layout. Keep in mind that you don’t need one of every category for each room.

I drew a quick labeled layout of the dungeon:

I can’t draw for toffee.

Lookout post. During the day the heat is too intense for the Uvahtun to post guards in the turret, but at night Desmor from area 2 is located here. Guardroom. Two benches flank a trapdoor leading into the sandstone floor. A bored human Spy named Desmor has drawn the short straw and been positioned here to watch the entrance. He greets the party as though welcoming them to a fancy restaurant, hoping to lower their guard, and takes the first opportunity to flee. This candlelit room is completely empty except for a couple of 10-foot poles. A square obelisk blocks the door to the north. Two holes run through the top corners, through which the poles can be run to create handles. The stone is coated in a gelatinous acid: anyone touching it without the aid of the handles must succeed on a DC 15 Constitution saving throw or take 2d10 acid damage. This dusty passage is lined with niches in the walls, each one containing an ornate black candle shapes like a demon claw. Each one is worth 5 gp. The wooden door at the south of this room swings open to reveal a large room propped up by four pillars, and littered with storage crates and bedrolls. A battered golem stands in the centre of the room, and attacks anyone who passes through the door without first uttering the password “Teshkair”. The golem has the stats of an Animated Armor, with only 16 hit points. The creates contain rations sufficient to feed 3 people for a week. A summoning circle lies beyond the curtain hiding this room, pulsing with dark energy. Two Cultists have just finished summoning a Maw Demon.

So that’s how I build the layout for a small cultist outpost. How do you organise your dungeon building? I’m interested to hear other people’s techniques.