Today on DM’s Coffee Table: Creating a Random Dungeon, or a Dungeon Randomly, or Dungeons or something…..

So for those of us who have been playing Dungeon and Dragons for a few years now, especially us DMs, know that creating a dungeon can be a tough experience. You need to give a little variety to help keep players interested in the game. You can’t always fill your dungeon with plain square rooms and minimal fluff for people to explore or give life. But you also can’t just come up with a full paragraph on the fly of intimate details of a room the characters will like say “No monster? No treasure? Moving on!”. Also for those of us who have the “Dungeon Crawler” type players can come up very short in this area.

So how do we create a dungeon that no only has some interesting areas, but also has enough information so we don’t have to write down the whole dungeon from scratch?

We that’s simple Wizards of the Coast has already prepared us for just such an emergency in the Dungeon Master’s guide.

Yeah I know, I know, why should I even give a crap about what you are saying if you are just going to point me at the DM’s guide? Well stick it out and you just might find some interesting information………hopefully, or else why should I even be blogging?

Hmm…..

Ok so first lets get the generic info out of the way. For those of you playing 5th edition you can expect to find out how to create your dungeons on Page 290 of the Dungeon Master’s guide. There is so much information in the 5th edition DM’s guide including Tricks, Traps, Room purpose(which is a great addition), Dungeon Dressings, I mean they thought of almost everything you can think of for this and with a quick photo copy(for non distribution purposes of course) you can have a quick reference at the table and even some fast Dungeon Delving fun without the need for too much leg work.

For those of you who have the 4th edition DM guide might run across a slight issue, not all of the DM guides released for 4th edition have the random dungeon generation. You will need the earlier hard bound DM Guide if you want it. The one that came in the pretty box and is soft bound doesn’t have it!

But fear not I do have a couple things to help out even those who aren’t fortunate enough to have a DM’s guide.

First is the obvious one, if you haven’t been checking the Reddit articles on DnD enough or even searching around at all for this subject the first and foremost is Donjon!

Yup! It’s good ol’ DonJon and if you haven’t heard of it, it is a great online and free resource for DM’s to make dungeons and other goodies on the fly and it’s not just for Dungeon and Dragons players either. Just hop in select what you want and Donjon does the rest. This is an invaluable resource for starting DM’s and if you don’t know about it….. well you do now. Here is the Link!

Second, this one is pretty easy, just search in the app store on your phone and look for dungeon generator, there are a couple that are pretty nice, I find ProDnD to be pretty nice, just remember when it comes to apps you aren’t likely to get a full on generator without a little money.

Third, and a fun one, is Gozzy’s. Gozzy does something a little different from DonJon’s generator as it lets you choose slightly different areas like caves, but the wilderness one is probably my favorite as it gives you a good way to have a more out door, Mirkwood kind of feel. You can check out Gozzy’s generator here.

Fourth and final one was actually made for those of you who still enjoy 3rd Edition! Wizards…. Yup Wizards of the Coast was nice enough to make their own dungeon generator and as of me writing this post is still up on their site here. You can generate the dungeon and even include monsters and items from different books, not a bad resource for 3rd or 3.5 edition players at all, it also includes a lot of information for the DM as well.

Now, to fill up those rooms you can use a couple different resources. One takes us back to DonJon with his random treasure generator, just set the salvage to 100% and remove the magic items and BAM you have some stuff to fill out a room to give it a little personality and some non basic coinage for players.

The other way is something I recently discovered on my ventures across the web, found here. Thanks to a user on EN world you can generate some pretty nice and descriptive minor items for your players to interact with, or find a trap, or trick if you are reading 5th edition tricks they are nasty sometimes and can be a great resource to break up the mundane of what a standard dungeon can have.

Another interesting addition is the Wizards generator for Barrel, Crate, and Sack Generator which will give you plenty of semi-valuables for your characters to find in those things strewn about your dungeons.

And because I love to roll dice and having not just myself but other’s input is great, The sub Reddit of BehindTheTables is a great resource if you don’t know about it check it out for some interesting tables to roll on.

So there you have it a few fun things to add to your tool belt for making random dungeons. I do plan to make a post about how I use the 5th edition’s DM guide for creating a dungeon so stay tuned for that!

Later guys!