Fast dungeon design for lazy people

If you get stuck consult the I-Ching

1. Steal, scrawl , or randomly generate a map. Look at it, does anything jump out? Write it down. Roll some dice on fun tables and riff off a couple o things.

2. Come up with d6 factions or d4 monster infestations that inhabit the place. How do they relate to each other? What are the major resources they're using there?

3. Generate various other critters that might be there. Start considering what various (d8?) locations might have been/currently be for. Bonus points if they don't make sense.

4. Outside of the "tribal stronghold" area, key some monsters using random tables. Place a few according to some idea you've got so far. Let weird combos arise and guide you toward interesting design choices.

5. Once the inhabitants are here figure out what stuff looks like based on who lives where/what they're doing. Giant centipedes might live in cavernous areas with glowing fungus and dark interconnected pools, Cockatrices build nests on high walls using bones and their tarlike saliva.

6. Add treasure they like. Orcs might purposefully hoard cool stuff, giant spiders might have forsaken adventurer's gear in websacs.

7. Doors/secret rooms/stairs/traps/tricks...........

8. Once you have a rough draft make a second draft rearranging anything new you thought up.

9. You should have a mostly empty dungeon splattered with coolstuff here and there, and some idea about how all the coolstuff relates to itself. Fill in all the extra rooms by rolling dice or using percentages

1-2 monster (33%)
3 trap (16%)
4 special (16%)
5-6 empty (33%)

3in6 monsters have treasure (50%)
2in6 traps have treasure (33%)
1in6 empty rooms have treasure (16%)

You want enough treasure so that a Fighter could get to the next level TIMES the number of expected players (TIMES 0.8 for 80%, if you're giving XP from defeated monsters but I don't), then take that number and double it because your players aren't going to find everything. Hide the extra half in stupid places they'll never look.

THUS a Fighter needs 2000XP to get to level 2. Using this formula a first level dungeon will have about 128,000 GP worth of treasure in it. But only 6,400 worth will be laying around in the open or on monsters waiting to be found. The other 6,400 will be hidden in secret walls, inside paintings of opulent feasts, buried in the sand, hidden in statues that try to bite off your hand, or tucked inside rotting elephant carcasses.

If you're considering giving XP for collecting magic items you're on your own. I consider magic items to be something else, and most of them come with a cost.

10. Look at nearby levels and determine what may or may not happen when the players intervene. Leave what actually happens up to play, but it's good to have a general idea of the mechanations within the loose naturalism.

11. Keep notes during play, re-populate accordingly.

I'm working on some Abulafia generators for making interesting treasures, rooms, and traps. Most random dungeon generators just spit out boring stuff (10000cp, a trap where a pit opens up with spikes, every room has cobwebs and manacles). I'm a fucking cyborg and I like to get random generator gibberish to feel out things. I'd rather paint on hewn bark than clean canvas.

Idea for treasures: generate some GP values like 3d8xdungeon level+player level, do that for d% of the rooms each. Hide treasures equal to the GP value in each room. If you roll a maxval on a room make it a special magic treasure.



I-Ching gibberish for dungeons:

Line 4:

Progressing like a Five Skills Rat.
Persistence is dangerous.

Trying to progress without the ability to do everything that is needed. Going on may get one into trouble.
(It is said of the Five Skills Rat, that:
It can fly, but it cannot go past a roof,
It can climb, but it cannot do an entire tree,
It can swim, but it cannot cross a ditch,
It can dig, but it cannot conceal its body,
It can run, but it cannot before a man.)

Sounds like a PC