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There are a lot of videos and articles about how to make the eponymous dungeons in Dungeons & Dragons, and designing those dungeons is a ton of fun. But if you want your dungeons to have verisimilitude, or the illusion of realism, then you want to make sure that different aspects of the dungeon are coherent, that they fit together well.
There are five story pieces you want in your dungeon design:
- Map
- Location
- Creators
- History
- Current Inhabitants
Those five pieces are interactive, and form a nice loop of design. The nice thing is that you can start with wherever your inspiration is. The arrows in the graph below are reversible. If you know your Creators for example, and then figure out the Location, you can do it backwards and it works just the same.
Location
This is the surrounding area. Where is the dungeon? What is the local environment? There are lists of incredibly evocative locations that can spark your inspiration all around the internet, so I’m not going to spend a lot of time here, but this is my basic list of locations.
- Tavern
- Sewer
- Tower
- Laboratory
- Dungeon (basement to a castle), Tomb, Crypt
- Natural Cave
- Man Made Cave, Mine
- Temple
- Forest
- Jungle
- Swamp
- Ruins
- Desert
- Ocean, Ship, Island
- Underwater
- Volcano
- Alternate Dimension: Fey, Good
- Alternate Dimension: Fel, Evil
- Alternate Dimension: Machine, Law
- Alternate Dimension: Eldritch, Chaos
These are just your standard tropes of fantasy adventure, that you can build from. Some of these can be combined. Like I said, there are some incredibly evocative and inspirational lists online, this is just a broad category.
Creators
When the area was first a usable space, who made it so? We don’t just want to know the ancestry, though that is helpful, but also the purpose of the space.
Ancestry
- Human
- Dwarf
- Elf
- Dragon
- Giant
- Fey
- Demons, Devils
- Beholders, Mind Flayers
Purpose
- Bandits/Criminals
- Cult/Religion
- Political/Government
- Magical Use
- Lair/Stronghold
- Containment
History
In order to determine the history, how the Creators and the Current Inhabitants connect, you need to first figure out how old is this dungeon?
Is it new enough that the Creators are the Current Inhabitants, making this a first generation dungeon? Did the Current Inhabitants drive out the Creators, making this a second generation dungeon? Or have so many different groups come through here, that this is practically a 10th generation dungeon, and it’s impossible to truly know who all have taken the space and for what purpose?
If you want a detailed dungeon, an interesting exercise would be to make the dungeon as it was for the creators, then go through a series of alternate inhabitants, and how they have modified the dungeon to their needs over time. How cool would it be to go through a dungeon, and see different details that silently tell the story of the dungeon throughout the generations? Perhaps there have been dozens of changes, but each to different depths of the dungeon, so as you go deeper you find older, and more powerful details, implying it’s complex history. Definitely not something you should feel the need for every dungeon, but it would be cool for a big epic centerpiece.
Current Inhabitants
What monsters are we fighting? What are the stat blocks we need to prepare? Some people find a monster that seems cool, and start from there. If not though, here are some basic categories like above that I use to pick my monsters.
- Professional Humanoids (Soldiers, etc)
- Fanatical Humanoids (Cultists, etc)
- Amateur Humanoids (Bandits, etc)
- Beasts
- Monstrosities
- Goblinoids/Orcs
- Lizardfolk
- Kobolds/Dragons
- Plants
- Oozes
- Constructs
- Corporeal Undead
- Incorporeal Undead
- Fey
- Demons
- Devils
- Elementals
- Giants
- Celestials
- Aberrations
Again, you can mix and match this list for some really interesting combinations. Especially when you add in a different boss monster from the list below.
- Bandit Captain
- Cult Leader
- Political Conspirator
- Evil Wizard
- Hobgoblin
- Lycanthrope
- Kraken
- Sentient Item
- Vampire
- Lich
- Dragon
- Hag
- Arch Fey
- Arch Demon
- Arch Devil
- Giant
- Genie
- Mind Flayer
- Beholder
- Fallen Celestial
Map
Of course I mention this last, because this is where I pass you off to the wider internet. The amount of dungeon maps you can find all over is occasionally overwhelming. If you find a cool map that inspires you to make an adventure, that’s great, but if not, then hopefully knowing the current monsters or the location you want the dungeon is in will help you narrow down your search.
If you do want to make your own dungeon, which is also fun, here are three cool threads for you to begin to pull on.
First is the 5-Room Dungeon, where you have a simple mix of room types to have a functional dungeon.
- Entrance and Guardian
- Puzzle/Roleplaying Challenge
- Trick or Setback
- Climax, Big Battle, or Conflict
- Reward, Revelation, or Twist
Then is the Matt Colville 3x3x3 Dungeon design. This is where you decide what the 3 levels of the dungeon will be themed for, such as Entrance, Puzzle, or Climax. Then for each of those 3 you split into 3 areas of the level, like monster habitation, storage, or intruder prison. Finally each of those 3 areas has 3 rooms, like cell, guard room, or prisoner equipment storage. That brings you to 27 rooms that has a natural nested flow.
Lastly, if you want practice on making individual spaces, I don’t think it’s too late to do the #Dungeon23 challenge. The challenge originally was to make a single dungeon room every day for the year 2023. I modified it because I’m scared of huge time commitments like that, so I decided to do a single room per week. Also I found this neat room theme guide to focus my creativity a bit more.
The Nerdd 
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