Subvault dungeon

I'm trying to draw up more dungeons as a creative exercise because my brain is numb and I forget things easily and also I get depressed when I don't sit by myself somewhere and frantically scribble in a notebook. It's just gotta be that way OKAY???

I don't care for dungeons with tons of detail. It's too much crap to sift through and my brain doesn't work that way. I like when dungeons imply that something is there, but doesn't really show you, so you can daydream about it and fill in the stuff on your own. Like paint by numbers but with blood and swords.

This heap of forgotten trash is called the SubVault of the Wandering Plague. Is the wandering plague you? Is it the monsters? Is there some rampant disease barely contained within? Hoho! Play on to find out!

The room descriptions are intended to be evocative rather than perscriptive. The idea here is that I puke out what I think is cool and if someone else can harvest anything from it all the better. A loose attempt at dungeon ecology is made but a creative person with a wee bit of drive can probably find loads of stufff in there. The theoretical GM would need to interpret a lot and do some actual preperation (gasp!) before running this. At least enough to know what the fuck is going on. With that in mind I've also provided a number of tables which fill in the blanks. What's in this room? What goodies were the baboons hiding? Can I use this to kill stuff? All the important questions.

The SubVault is a small branch of the Undervoid colonized by batmen and lizardmen from nearby sectors. They really don't like each other but life goes on. Both have enslaved pit gnomes just as nature intended. Shroom goblins also have a habitat here, living in synthesis with the native orb spiders.

Also there's deeper remnants of this sector's past. A train station, an abandoned research facility, a reservoir. The new denizens are using this stuff for their own ends, but they don't comprehend it. There's some giants living to the southwest. They've live here a long, long time. They're sick of living. They stay because there's a fire demon trying to escape and they don't know what else to do but try to keep it at bay. They're about ready to give up.



Tune in tomorrow for more I think

RANDOM ENCOUNTERS
1. shroom goblins
2. lizardmen
3. batmen
4. pit gnomes
5. corrosive jelly
6. orb spiders
7. golem of skulls
8. rival adventuring party!

WHAT ARE THEY DOING??
1. Lost & aggressive
2. starving/hunting
3. hauling loot
4. arguing
5. fleeing from....
6. signing a truce
7. exploring
8. carrying wounded
9. eating a............
10. fighting..........

BONUS ROUND
1. knows where the good stuff is
2. willing to trade
3. knows the way
4. secretly diseased
5. one of them is a wizard
6. maybe royalty
7. hiding something??
8. traitors
9. captured a fairy
10. doomed grandiose plan

SMALL TREASURES
1. brass trinkets w  sequins
2. slightly rusty tools
3. dead body
4. a gem of minor value
5. weapon cache!
6. chains/rope/pulleys
7. torches/lamp oil
8. a bomb
9. is this food?
10. elegant heavy furniture
11. sinful and hedonistic art
12. tastelessly opulent clothes
13. exotic medicinal herbs
14. ritual stuff (silver, incense, monkey paw...)
15. orb spidersilk (weave w moonwool to make mythril)
16. poison (roll fav tables)
17. potion (as above)
18. ring (only barely cursed)
19. wand (d6 charges)
20. amulet(does it do anything?)

CONDITION roll this table for any reason (utility of plan, state of treasure, safety of bridge)
1. garbage
2. workable
3. good.
4. FANCY
5-6 roll again/stolen>>1. magic 2. owner wants it back 2-6 valuable

DANGERS!!!
1. fire
2. ice
3. water
4. collapsing
5. needles
6. gas
7. teleporter
8. biohazard
9. undead
10. cursed
11. sunken
12. vorpal
13. pitfall
14. siren
15. makeshift
16. fortification
17. diseased
18. illlusory
19. WarZone
20. roll twice

GOOD STUFF
1. healing
2. ESP
3. truesight
4. blink
5. float
6. enchanted
7. talking
8. shapeshifting
9. blessing
10. expensive
11. growing
12. hiding
13. glowing
14. edible
15. finding
16. muting
17. shaking
18. telekenisis
19. purifying
20. roll twice!

Treasure Form
1. jewelry
2. equipment
3. weapons
4. armor
5. art
6. clothes
7. monsterparts
8. ancient/lost/lore
9. books
10. artifacts
11. really big
12. really small
13. portal
14. container
15. vial
16. rod
17. energy
18. ghostly
19. tech
20. map to cache

Trap form
1. pressure plate/tripwire
2. machine
3. alter/bookcase
4. chest
5. door
6. statue
7. puzzle (free roll on any tables!)
8. liquid
9. wall
10. orb/light/gate
11. furniture/artifact
12. pile of dead bodies

Trap activation/shutoff
1. lift
2. lever/switch/button
3. transmute
4. given
5. eyes
6. lose
7. center
8. knock
9. look
11. voice
12. blood
13. flood
14. smash
15. heat
16. light
17. spirit
18. magic
19. intent
20. dreams

special--the hidden way through
1. trapdoor
2. ladder
3. chute
4. alcove
5. tunnel
6. teleporter
7. bag
8. door
9. vault
10. temple

Wrasslin Owlbears

Grappling is fun. Jump on the dude and pull 'em to the ground, strangle the life out. Just like Conan! RAAWWGGHH BODYSLAAAMMM!! Like everything else in life people try to overly complicate grappling rules. I like my gameplay simple and decisive. If you put yourself at risk to accomplish a goal your success has to be worth the danger. I try to encourage players to do things other than just say "I stab his face". You gotta make the mechanics just as simple as attack rolls. Saves are good for everything.

A strength check is enough--how does your strength compare to their strength? Maybe if the other guy is big enough they could get a size bonus, but who really cares? How much fun would it be for the halfling with 18 strength to strangle an ogre to death? We know from the fiction that he couldn't choke out a black dragon but I'm willing to be lenient in certain cases for rule of cool.

If they want to strangle an unsuspecting victim unconscious they'll probably automatically succeed if they pass the check, especially if they're using a garrote. Regular combat is too granular to go straight to auto-shotting dudes while grappling, so mostly its about restraining a foe, and yourself at the same time while both combatants struggle for supremacy. If you wanna try to throttle them after grappling they take d4 damage on proceeding turns. You can't grapple someone and stab them with something bigger than a dagger at the same time.

A PC with a martial arts background could probably do more with hand-to-hand combat than others. If a Tanner cum lvl 1 fighter wants to throw sick high kicks he'll just  fall on his face.

The danger is here: If you fail your save it puts you at a disadvantage. Oftentimes this means the grappler becomes the grapplee, or gets knock prone, or thrown off a cliff, or gets sucker punched in the tussle. Depending on what system I'm running getting attacked while defenseless could mean a bonus damage die, damage taking the next die size up, or jumping straight to critical damage. If two PCs are holding a monster while the third stabs it in the face the fight is probably over. This goes both ways: monters can and do use the most of the grappling mechanics.

Wizlock--magically bind someone's wrists together after touching them. Can be broken with a strength check Vs caster's Int.

Pile-d-d-driver--after grappling an opponent bodyslam them on the following turn. 1HD monsters are instantly killed. All others take d12 damage and are knocked prone for d4 turns.

Spellweaving

Wizards search for the true names of things, the stuff inside the part that you see and touch. All things have an inner beingness, and a name which corresponds to its identity. Not just the peninsula and atoll as a whole, but every pebble and blade of grass dwelling there.

To change a thing in the world you have to understand its truer nature, how it's connected to the whole. Things can only change in accordance with their nature. The deeper sms more significant the change, the more things have to change around it to compensate. The more you stay with something's original state the less work needs to be done.

A log is a log, no more work needs to be done. It is already perfect.

A river with a dam needs not only the materials to make it, but all the accumulated technology, life-stories, knowledge, and infrastructure required for dam building. 70,000 years of history.

A beaver builds a dam out of logs. They do so, without thinking of it at all, in a way that improves the land around them. They create habitats and bring balance to the area.

When humans make a dam the landscape changes, the river changes, the fish die, the forest dies, the river dies. Humans have gained mastery, but in their mastery also destroyed. Things are thoughtlessly moved out of place and the world around compensates by dying.

Wizards learn the art of the beaver. Health, hearth, home with tiny movements and simple words, nothing more. Change the least and preserve the balance.

NPC generator

I made this NPC generator that produces crazed lunatics to drop into your game. They've got flaws, drives, and personalities. Works for rival adventuring parties, quest givers, local flavor, or any other type of fantasy bum whose sole purpose is to complicate your PC's lives. Stick 'em in some encounter tables and let your players do the rest.

Dungeon as a living entity

Santiago Caruso

The Dungeon isn't a really place built by people, though parts may be added on by mortal hands, or something made by mortals may become a Dungeon. It is something that grows from the world itself. The Dungeon is the inevitable decay of Law towards an entropic state, it emerges when things begin to break down. The Dungeon has its own mind, its own plans, its own desires & processes. It moves and changes by subtly bending smaller-scale living things to its will. The Dungeon is patient and plotting.

This is why traps reset themselves, why the architecture makes no logical sense, why doors open for monsters but are stuck for players, why everything is trying to kill you. The Dungeon is itself a living ur-trap, with bait to lure and teeth to gnash.

The Dungeon's desires: to Lure, to Harvest, to Grow

 How dungeons grow
Dungeons start out as a sharp rock in a wasteland, or a forest about to catch on fire, or a sinkhole. It catches some prey, feels and tastes its blood and screams, and wants more. It harvests their suffering and uses the magical energy to establish itself. It changes the landscape bit by bit via evolution, adding a vine here or a cave there. The more and smarter things it kills and eats the more it grows. Eventually it finds a way to attract manflesh, then the game is really one. The older and deeper a dungeon the craftier it gets.

Each body caught in a pit, strangled, slashed, burned, beaten, within its walls issues a life force which is consumed by the Dungeon.

Kris Kuksi

Corridors emerges and stretch and shift, taking the shape of something of a sympathetic nature to the surrounding area. Damp cold stone crawling with roots and insects. Hand-cut marble and brass trim. Tile mosaics depicting dolphins and men having sex. Highly detailed carved soapstone tentacles wreathing and tangling together. The Dungeon is a touch artistic and inventive in its architectures, it wants to inspire curiosity.

For this reason too Dungeons bury themselves in the ground, hiding spooky entrances, with rusted gates and skulls. Foreboding but speaking to an inner lust of curiosity and tale it knows all sapient races have.

dungeon as the in-between
Not all dungeons grow from a dangerous piece of the landscape. The most dangerous and horrible ones grow out of loneliness. A tomb constructed to house a king, stuffed with his magic spoon and mythrile sword and precious wives, and left to rot. The stinking vapor of his failed career and laments of the trinkets desiring a new master coalesce and take shape.

A family lives in an old house for generations. They store their most treasured belongings in the attic. Grandpa's gun, great-grandma's love letters, a locket containing the umbilical cord of a stillborn child, a box of weird shit belonging to some forgotten uncle collected during the war and never spoke about but he hid it and secretly looked through it and reminisced, forgotten under a floorboard.

The family died out, the house passed through various hands, most of the stuff cleared out, but some of it was left. The attic wasn't used as much and the stuff sat there and grew lonely, it missed being reminisced over. Eventually that part of town gets blighted, falls into ruin, the house is left standing, delapidated.

All horror movies are about dungeons. You were attracted by something, now you can't escape, and there's a thing that wants to give you a fate worse than death for its own confusing and malignant satisfactions.

Places that were known, used, then forgotten can grow into dungeons. The creepy stairs leading to your cellar is an embryo. The pile of stones that look like a house in the woods is mimicking something. Dungeons grow where things are lost or forgotten, unlooked at by human eyes. They collect in the dust and rot and grow like bacterial colonies where the fresh air doesn't reach to clear it out.

If you don't do spring cleaning, open up and air out your house the rot might set in. You'll start having bad luck, have to move out, then the house will be vacant and the poison can grow.

Dungeons don't exist in physical reality. Dungeons can be measured from the outside but not the inside. A torn apart ancient monastery with a creepy staircase that made up its own lies about a sacrificial cult, twisting the echos of the good natured old monks into something it can use. Behind the door is a different reality created by the dungeon.

treasure as lure
dungeons get their treasures by luring in idiots, eating them, and keeping their stuff to use to lure more idiots. sometimes it does this by spreading rumors on the wind like pollen to attract adventurers. sometimes it does this by being on a layline or having some resource to attracts wizards and dwarfs to embiggen it and manufacture fancy trinkets, before constructing their doom.

that's why we laugh at wizards and dwarfs. there's inherent folly built into their cravings. They build and search and hunt and experiment while what they make is actually the fertile soil for a dungeon to grow. Wizards and Dwarfs are the worms that turn mountains and caves and metal and gold into dungeons.

Wolfgang Grasse

monsters as symbiotic parasites
Monsters are like gut flora, or part of a root microbiome for dungeons. The Dungeon gives them a place to live away from the light and infest and be horrible, and in return they help it kill things and keep them from leaving.

Goblins move in. Kobolds infest. Hobgoblins form a stronghold. Ogres seek shelter. Oozes seep out. Every dungeon needs an ecosystem of lesser creatures to aid in digestions.

looting dungeons
It doesn't want to be looted, its loot is its stored nutrience, but to give the impression that it is lootable. It can't just snap its jaws on every person that walks in or people would stop going in. If you take magic stuff out of it some of the mystery that keeps it going is lost.

The Dungeon doesn't want you to leave, but as you do, loaded with sacks of cold, it smiles coldly to itself, for others will be coming soon.



A universe dies when it becomes one enormous dungeon, sprawling for infinite, before collapsing on itself back into singularity.

guzzlebrite

    The clouds danced gaily in the summertime sunshine as Mordrimek Sputterbark flounced through scenic byways. To his right grouped bunches of lumbering stately elms, to his left a scrabble of wildflowers overwhich hung a cloud of nymphs gathering nectar. With a subtle kick of the toes and a twirl he bounded over a bridge passing a clear glittering stream. He was currently on his way to the gleaming city of Vernasthur to peddle his assortment of quasi-magical artifacts at the county fair.
    Lost in dreams of the heaps of silver groddings which would soon be filling his pockets he didn't notice the gnome Guzzlebrite sleeping in the middle of the road, and stepped squarely on his outstretched nose.
    With the rallying cry of "kiss a whore in the arse!" Guzzlebrite came bounding after, swinging about an intricately carved yew cudgel.

 "Hark, ye scoundrel! You've disfigured my beautiful and bulbous sneezer!" said Guzzlebrite, trying and failing to grab the hem of Modrimek's skyblue cloak. Modrimek tweaked the bouncing flower in his cap and redoubled his march without a word.

In a rage the gnome pounded the ground with his cudgel. The air erupted with the crashing of a titanic brass gong. Shocked out of his wits and struck nearly deaf Mordrimek bounced fully five feet into the air and collapsed in a ditch, scattering the mildly sorcerous contents of his mouse skin satchel about the avenue. With a chuckle Guzzlebrite transfigured himself into a hare, zipped to each of the trinkets and gathered them all into a sack.

"This smattering second-rate charms will have to suffice for recompense! Perhaps I can haggle the leechman to repair my schnozzer in return for this--" Guzzlebrite paused to squint at the squat pewter cup in his hand "'Hornflower's Best portable privy.'"

With a shrug the hare that was Guzzlebrite prepared a spell of 'To Faraway Removal', but Mordrimek regathered his senses and within a blink sent a hex of his own flying. Just as Guzzlebrite's temporal reality twisted and folded itself into elsewhere his fur turned a nauseating shade of magenta.

"May that gnome's mother fester puss sacks from her infected saddlebags," swore Mordrimek as he lay in the dust by the side of the road. Letting his head sink down he put his mind to the task of developing a plan of repossessing his lost wares and punishing the gnome. The task was overwhelming and soon he fell asleep.

Several hours later when the sun was descending and all was bathed in gold-orange light he awoke to the rattle of wagon wheels. Climbing to his feet he detected the crack of a whip and the light of a swinging lantern not far off. With hand raised he sought to parlay the driver but the car trundled by nearly crushing his toes. He ran after the cart.

"Ahoy! Salutations fine carriage operator! I require your assistance! It is I, Mordimek Sputterbark, third heir of the house of Lourdedarte and magician of no small renown! I have been waylayed of my shipment of ancient and rare artifacts by a band of gnome brigands and left to die in these foul woods!"

Mordimek gained on the cart and discovered it to be an exquisitely designed conveyance of lacquered tar pit ebony, pulled by a pair of prancing ruby mulecats and decked in worked silver fittings. The windows were obscured with a thickly piled mustard curtains. The driver was an automaton, guiding the cart mindlessly to its destination with fabulous emerald sight-lenses. Catching the chuck braces on the back of the carriage he quietly hoisted himself up and secured himself for the ride.

The orange light of the lower moon danced through scrabbling branches and scattered across brackish murk. A warm and humid night swathed the carriage as it descended many steep hills into swampland. A chorus of stinging insects likewise descended and harried Mordimek,who wrapped himself in his cape, though it was short enough to leave his ankles exposed. He cried, moaned, and wheezed for many bleak hours as the carriage jostled over roots and stones, and the coy growls of jagwompuses stalked from just beyond sight.

Near the dead hour, as the timpani toads ceased their sonorous canticles, there came a crash and the cart careened to a halt nearly horizontal in the mire. Mordimek was dislodged from his perch and hurled into a deep bank where he frantically scrabbled for purchase upon a sunken stone idol. He watched in amazement as the luxurious auto-cart extended an arm and emitted floodlight to illuminate the loathsome woods. A prodigious beast of indeterminable size passed across the road and disappeared into the trees, totally unaware of the mayhem it left in its wake.

From the top of the cart a hatch opened and out popped a thin man wearing a sapphire encrusted leotard and yellow wing-tipped boots. He scratched his bald head, placed his hands on his hips, then spun immediately around to glare at Mordimek hanging helpless in the muck. In place of eyes he had a pair of telescoping appendages which adjusted themselves in an irate manner.

"You! Repulsive vagabond! What is the meaning of this intrusion!" said the man. Mordimek threw himself off the stone idol and plunged into the depths of the murkey water while the wizard hurled knives into the water after him.

Trap theory & easy trap ideas

 I don't like pitfalls as a trap. You're walking along and fwummpp 2d6 damage ya goof. I prefer the psychological thing where the players go "uhh this thing looks like it might kill us? should we even fuck with it or just go around? who's got the big stick?" I want them to say the same thing about monsters too. Monsters are traps that chase you down the hallway.

That being said sometimes you just gotta put dangerous stuff laying around for the players to blunder into. The dungeon doesn't like you. You are its food. It doesn't exist for the players to loot. It exists to lure assholes to their deaths and harvest their intestines as food for asexual reproduction like an amoeba. 

"you have to step on this thing" traps don't make sense unless the players actually step on it. Then you gotta give em a reason to say they step on it. Like the rug in front of a nice armoire, in the process of opening the armoire you'll step on the rug. I guess this is why the old books say pressure plate traps only go off on 1-in-6, that's the odds you'll step just on the right spot.

we have tasty nectar for you

Traps can look like a fun thing to play with but there should be a hint that something is wrong. Just a hint. The natural world is full of traps and ambush predators. They do their job by trying to look harmless or having a seductive thing to lure unwary victims.

If you think of the dungeon as a living entity that wants to eat the players, but be really lazy about it, you're on your way to thinking up a good trap.

rusted chains iron jaw

How to make a trap
When my brain isn't working and I can't think of  clever trap a lot of times I just take an item or feature that might legitimately exist in the dungeon and make it ugly and dangerous. Maybe put a piece of bait near it (or the barely recognizable remains of a corpse). It's easy to think of an effect when you know what the thing is supposed to be for. If you do this long enough weird shit starts coming out.

The fun is letting the players interact with it up to the point where they go "maybe this is a bad idea"

Some of these aren't really traps.

D46 trapped cursed dangerous tricks

1. Suit of rusty armor with demons carved on it. When you put it on it locks up and needles tipped with poison pierce the wearer.
2. Braizer full of coals. Stinks like death. Billows toxic fumes if lit.
3. A mirror. If you get too close to it your reflection tries to grab you and pull you in.
4. A sign "dont go in the hallway". You can see treasure at the end of the hallway. Really it's a teleportation trap, or just before you get to the end of the hall right at the last second it releases a flood of lava.
5. Cauldron with a curious ladder going in. Lid slams shut, fills with boiling water.
6. Tall unstable looking pillars delicately balancing on jade frog statues with gems embedded in them.
7. Vase of flowers that releases sleeping gas
8. Suspended animation tubes containing rare animals floating in horrific stone/metal melting acid.
9. wand of self-detonation?
10. A huge brass bowl with treasure in the bottom and a ladder going up. Pissy fire elemental underneath.
11. A river full of piranhas
12. A big statue that follows the players just out of sight. Blocks up the passage when they try to flee from another enemy
13. Black and white tiled floor. Step on the black tiles and they get super hot.
14. a giant hand hanging in the middle of the room. At first it just looks like a grotesque chandelier. Swoops down and grabs you as you pass underneath. Lifts/drops or crushes or something worse.
15. A freshly dug grave with a pale swollen body in it. If you climb in to investigate the body it comes to life or an unseen servant dumps soil on you.
16. a staircase that seems like its going up, but really it's going down, or going to a completely different place, or only goes one way.
17. a mask that changes your face when you take it off.
18. water or food. It's poison.
19. A book that take memories out of your head or eats your spells.
20. A knife that only heals people you hate with its stabs.
21. A bow powered by fingers.
22. pants that make you impotent
23. flowers in a nice vase laced with bones-to-rubber pollen
24. a friendly campfire that feels warm but causes hypothermia
25. bowl or fork that rots food it touches
26. a drawer with an imp in it, the drawer is rattling. the imp craves your friendship and affection like a pitiful ex but horrifically fucks up everything it tries to do and misunderstands every instruction. also its indestructible. an anti-familiar. An unfamiliar?
27. a small walkway across a yawning chasm. halfway across a bucket of oil falls on you and goblins start shooting flaming arrows.
28. it looks like an elevator, but it's really an incenerator.
29. a potion containing a mean ghost, a tornado, or an ocean.
30. the foot of a little girl. if you touch it with your bare skin she starts following you around pushing buttons.
31. a window that looks like it goes outside from deep in the dungeon. if you open it all the air gets sucked out of the room.
32. a river that rusts metal
33. a skull that feeds on magic
34. an expensive rare gem encrusted thing that carries an anti-magic field
35. a drinking horn that bites your lips off.
36. nice looking shoes. under the insert is a portal to rusty nail world.
37. bandages of +1 septic infection
38. a really long hallway lined with drills
39. a slippery chute off a cliff. you manage to survive the fall but now the tide is moving in and there's something in the water
40.  a portrait that changes to show the last person that looked at it
41. a valuable looking crystal protrusion covered in microhairs that pierce your hand and burrow into your heart
42. a door that swings itself open wildly and knocks your ass off a ledge
43. stuff that hisses faintly. explodes if you pick it up.
44. a hallway covered in acid pustules. there's an imp with a fork jumping around it like a bouncehouse
45. a little hole with a nice cute friendly mouse in it that walks with a cane. the mouse is a compulsive liar and friends with a bugbear.
46. an expensive rug covering a hole in the floor. under the hole is a gleeful giant with its lips pressed up against the hole. or maybe his lips are pressed thru the hole and they look like comfy cushions to sit on