Bite-Sized Dungeons
A downloadable workbook
Bite-Sized Dungeons
Based on my original blog post.
This notebook is a tool to help you quickly develop dungeons and other adventuring sites! Each spread has a graph of 6 nodes with 6 edges on the left side, and on the right side there are sections for you to write a basic description of the place, a table of 6 random encounters, and keys for all 6 of the rooms or nodes.
To get started, draw a card from a typical deck (or open the pamphlet to a random page). Roll 6-sided dice to generate your map according to the steps below:
- Determine which 1 or 2 rooms are entrances into the dungeon.
- Determine which 2 rooms are occupied by NPCs.
- Determine which 1 of the rooms occupied also have treasure.
- Determine which 1 of the rooms unoccupied have treasure.
- Determine which 1 of the rooms unoccupied have a feature with which players can interact.
- Determine which 1 of the rooms unoccupied is trapped (which may or may not be the room with treasure from step #3).
- Determine the 6 connections between rooms, rolling d6 for: (1) a corridor, requiring 1 turn to traverse, (2) a stuck door, requiring force to proceed, or (3) a secret entrance. Results from (4-6) do not pose obstacles.
There are 13 possible maps to start from, enough for one every week for one season of the year!
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Comments
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Hey, do you happen to have a PDF fillable version of this? I'm using your booklet in a game jam and it would be super helpful 🙂
I love this technique. I've used it for many projects. More than anything I love the "tightness" of the results. No filler, all killer :P
As yet another person who frequently uses your original blog post for dungeon generation, this is so great to see! Thanks for all your work.
Hi TF,
This is a fantastic addition to your dungeon generation procedure! I already used your original blog post as a basis for the procedural dungeons in my adventure module, Downrooted.
I cannot recommend this enough!
This is great, and your blogpost is very helpful too! Will definitely use these layouts, think number 4 is my favourite...
The layout is cool and works!
On the other hand, the empty tables are a hassle. This is most of the work anyway.
Would be great to have a handful of pages already filled up with flavorful tables you could used right away.
The layout could change, the vibe of the tables could change, but will only be a few rolls from play.
Use ChatGPT instead
Hi! I think the contents of a dungeon, because they are most of the work, are the most interesting parts. I wasn’t really interested in providing generic flavor tables because I don’t find them compelling or flavorful.
The idea is that you go into this with a fun idea for a dungeon, but don’t know where to start with regards to layout and stocking. For lack of ideas to make your own dungeon, there’s so many existing dungeons out there, and they wouldn’t be helped by this because they already exist.