Creating Dungeons The Easy Way!

oh I think about designing DND dungeons a lot and I've designed a whole bunch over the past year for my patreon and I'm gearing up to design a whole bunch more for next year I've even written a guidebook detailing my process for creating dungeons it's called flick silver pins guide to exploring dungeons following this guide you'll answer 15 questions with the help of some advice and random tables and at the end of it all you'll have all the information you need to plan out and design awesome and Fun Dungeon for your DND game or any other fantasy tabletop role-playing game you can grab the physical version of the zine on my online shop or you can get the digital version plus a bunch of other adventures and guidebooks from my patreon both of those are linked down in the description in the guide I mentioned John 4's excellent five-room dungeon method has a great template for creating small One-Shot dungeons so in this video I'm going to explain the five room dungeon method and then also how I have expanded it to really fit into my own personal process for creating fun and compelling fantasy dungeons to explore with your players okay so as the name suggests there are five rooms in this dungeon the first room is the entrance and the guardian room basically the players arrive at the dungeon and must find their way inside the guard could be a literal Guardian you know like a guard watching the entrance or maybe it's a trap or a hidden entrance something blocking the players from getting in the second room is a puzzle or role-playing encounter this room is intended to give the problem solving players a fun challenge to overcome it could be a brain puzzle or maybe some fun NPC interactions the third room is a trick or a setback I understand this room as a setup for room four so it's an encounter that pushes the players forward but will also make the final confrontation more difficult the fourth room room is the climactic battle or conflict this is the big boss fight or the reason that the players have ventured into the dungeon we're gonna talk more about interesting Encounters in the next video so make sure you subscribe for that and the fifth room is the reward the Revelation or the plot twist this room can simply contain the treasure that the big boss was protecting or maybe it contains the location of the next dungeon the players need to explore or maybe the players discover that by defeating the big boss they have put an even more Sinister series of events into motion so I think the five room dungeon is a fantastic way to lay out a simple dungeon if you have two hours that you're going to be playing and you need five rooms to run through this is a great easy setup for it I'll have a link down in the description to John 4's blog it is an amazing on ending supply of knowledge and inspiration definitely definitely go check it out so yeah the five room dungeon is awesome but what I have found in my process for creating dungeons is that five rooms isn't really enough especially if you're answering all 15 questions from the exploring dungeon guide you're gonna have way more ideas than will fit into five little rooms now the five rooms I I feel like I'm saying five room dungeon over and over and over again but the five rooms are intentionally open-ended and Broad and that's so you can kind of mix and match and fit all kinds of different encounters into the rooms to sort of accommodate your players or mix up the design from dungeon to dungeon but for my process I'm gonna add some rooms we're going from five to ten but also I want the rooms to be just a little more specific and what I've found down is that when the room descriptions are a little more narrow it's much easier to come up with ideas and fill in the template so you know that when you sit down to run your dungeon the design will be covered and you'll you'll have something good to play now for this process you don't have to use all 10 rooms and you'll more than likely find that you'll sort of naturally combine rooms here and there and you know even though this video is called the 10 room dungeon I find that I mostly make like seven eight or nine room dungeons okay let's jump into the 10 rooms first up just like before it's the entrance and the guardian it's an obstacle to overcome to get into the dungeon I try to have my guardian telegraphed to the players what they can expect to encounter more of inside the dungeon you know a little taste of what's to come now I should say the locations two through eight aren't actually numbered and that's because they're all interchangeable you can move them around however it fits and works for your dungeon story in fact these rooms should all be interconnected with multiple Pathways because it's more fun to explore a dungeon that that breaks apart and comes together and whines and and diverges than it is to just go from room to room in a straight line so next up is The Logical location this is simply a place that makes sense to be in the dungeon this is a room that is meant to give story to this place to make it feel realistic and and lived in so if we're talking a desert temple maybe that means some sort of well where the denizens get their water or maybe in a Cobalt layer it's the big room where they all sleep when they aren't digging more tunnels or bringing gold to their dragon Overlord then we have an environmental complication this could be your standard trap room you know like the Goblins have set up this trap to keep adventurers out or it could be something more natural maybe like a river of lava that's hard to Cross or maybe a room flooded with dark murky water of course there always has to be a secret entrance or exit because nothing makes players feel like they've got the upper hand more than bypassing uh formidable orc sentries that are are standing back at the entrance or finding a convenient way to escape once the alarm has been sounded then we have the alternate threat or Ally room this is a big part of how I make my dungeons more interesting the players are obviously gonna meet the the people that are living inside the dungeon but I'm also gonna have a third party thrown in to complicate things so you know maybe there's another adventuring party trying to find the same treasure that the players are or maybe there's another NPC that's trying to stop the cultists but for a totally different reason than the players lots of options for this one but it's it's what makes the exploring really really fun next is a room that has some sort of helpful information in it this can come in many forms but something that will give the players a leg up while exploring the rest of the dungeon it could be something like an imprisoned NPC that knows a secret passageway or maybe the players over here two minions discussing the evil wizards plans then there is the opposite it's the resource drain room this is a setback that the players undergo to remind them that they are in a dangerous place it could be a simple fight but now the players won't be able to save those healing potions for the final boss or maybe the players are betrayed by the Ally that they made a few rooms back when they alert the cultists to the player's presence and the alarm goes off next up is a secret room I always like to include a secret reward for my players something to incentivize them to explore and really pay attention to the hidden Clues I I leave throughout the dungeon you know maybe it's a magic item that will help them in the final battle or maybe it's a hidden passage for bypassing the room full of skeletons then just like rooms four and five in the five room dungeon we have rooms nine and ten the big battle or the final Conflict and the reward now I think one of these rooms should be why the players are exploring this dungeon in the first place you know are they here to defeat the undead warlock who's turning the villagers into zombies or maybe they simply want the treasure inside the old king's tomb of course the climactic final battle should be appropriately epic so your players feel like Heroes and the treasure should make sense for why it's here you know sure the dragon loves to hoard gold but why are there all these charred weapons and and pieces of armor laying around and just like in the five room dungeon method including a revelation or a plot twist in the final room is a great way to continue the story you know maybe the players find a map in the old king's tomb that leads them to an even greater treasure or maybe the demon that the undead warlock was trying to summon is released and teleports a way to cause havoc and destruction elsewhere you know the goal here is to create a believable dungeon that is also fun and exciting for the players to explore you know it should feel like a place that would exist even if the players weren't here but at the same time it should be compelling and challenging to Traverse and explore now the final two pages of the exploring dungeons guidebook has a dungeon in it that acts as a great example for the 10 room dungeon or in this case nine rooms because I combine rooms nine and ten together again if you'd like to pick up a copy of flick silver pins exploring dungeons or if you'd like to support this channel check out my online shop or my patreon thank you so so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one see ya [Music]

Channel: JP Coovert

Views: 76,649

Keywords: dungeons and dragons, dnd, d&d, DM, dungeon master, dungeon design, 5 room dungeon, johnn four, jp coovert, create, make, how to, tutorial, easy dungeon, your own dungeon, rpg, ttrpg, how to run dnd, how to run dungeons and dragons, how to be a DM, how to be a great DM

Id: UE044JBSQv8

Length: 11min 4sec (664 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 13 2022