UndeadWaffle on the OSR discord has been writing prolifically about his campaign lately. Not to be outdone I'm gonna riff on his stuff.
Recently he did a
write-up on his method of making dungeons. He uses the BX stocking method and comes up with ideas and monsters before he writes his dungeon.
I do the opposite. I generally start with layout first and work backwards to an idea, letting the development happen iteratively and organically from the layout.
This works for me because I rely heavily on procedurally generated content. The world starts out as random chaos and meaning begins to take shape as the pieces are developed.
I don't like long prep. I can easily spend all day tinkering if I let myself, which leads to burn out and damaged relationships. D&D is addictive.
The process
First I pick where I want a dungeon to go. This is probably a randomly chosen hex. I roll 2d10 for the number of rooms to start with. On graph paper I begin drawing rooms, sometimes throwing a d6 to help decide room size, orientation, and shape. I have a very intuitive mind and even randomly selected numbers can spontaneously generate rooms, shapes, traps, etc in my head. If I start having ideas I write them down, either as snippets or a table to roll on.
For my layouts I like to have a large main room with d4+2 branching paths, usually bisected by or connected to a main 'highway' which can quickly get occupants to a distant end of the dungeon. Highways are important because they form the backbone of transit around the floor - monsters use it, players use it, it's generally both dangerous and more likely to have divers travelers willing to barter, trade, or ply secrets, as well as rob, accuse, and solicit.
Each dungeon floor has 2 or 3 'areas' connected by choke points. Each area has 6-12 rooms, ordered chaotically, then connected with twisting passages, loops, and detours. I draw straight to final draft, letting ideas bubble up and vanish into the ether, forgotten. This i consider the 'pre-history' of the dungeon. Most dungeons are older beyond time out of mind, having been repurposed dozens of times over the centuries. I consider dungeons to be quasi-alive and malevolent. The original builders likely had minds unlike humans and altogether sinister, so I have no qualms about letting the layout make no sense. Dungeons are the bowels of the earth - treasure troves of dead gods, prisons for inhuman fiends, and bacterial cultures for transdimensional entities.
Once the layout is done I throw dice for each room to determine contents, adjusting at whim as I go.
1-2. Empty
3. Trap
4-5. Monster
6. Special
Empties have a 1:6 chance to have treasure. Traps have a 2:6. Monsters have 3:6. Specials are usually horrible. Generally there is something of low value, or medium value though cumbersome and awkward to transport, in every room. A few coins, a huge sheet of beaten copper, a forty pound demon skull, a crystal sarcophagus, ebony furniture. Etc.
Lots of empty rooms are important because death is almost a given. The idea here is to get in and get out. I've written before about my combats and I'll write about them again soon. I don't pull punches and my monsters are smart. The players have to be smarter. I refuse to except less.
By this point I've probably had enough ideas to give me a sense of at least some of the monster inhabitants. If there's clusters of occupied rooms I'll make these factions and use the factions to determine meaning.
Say I have 4 occupied rooms close together and the dungeon is located in a swamp (my favorite terrain type). These could be kobolds, Scorpio men, or zombies. Or maybe zombie kobolds and necromancer Scorpio men. I dress up the rooms around them with rooms for feeding, breeding, torturing, praying, communing, hiding, workshops, temples, and store rooms. Often rooms serve multiple purposes since real estate is limited. The faction probably has a leader, so I give them a private room, maybe near the temple or work rooms, provide them with secrets exits, protective traps, funds, furnishings, want artifacts. Often the faction will have a hierarchy, with a second in command, a priesthood, and a work force.
Factions always have friends, enemies, goals, prejudices, and obsessions. They're basically conglomerate NPCs. Sometimes the idea comes fully formed, sometimes I roll on tables. I make a few short notes.
After deciding the monster inhabitants I make the wandering monster table, either a d6 or d8. I like to have 1/2rd be weak or mindless monsters, and the remaining split between intelligent or powerful monsters. Some are taken from factions and placed monsters, some can only be found as wandering monsters.
Some OSR writers dislike long wandering monster lists, claiming it's better to a have a few interesting encounters than a long list of boring ones. My problem is rather that I have too many good ideas and I have to pare them down so they don't go to waste. I also like to make a note next to each entry to give them something to do, which I may not use when the time comes. An example of this:
1. D4 intelligent dingos, frantically looking for their pet dead cat.
2. Pet dead cat. Writhing full of maggots.
3. 2d6 goblins, holding court. Goblin lawyers well dressed, defendant is a severed elephant head with tusks worth 800gp each.
4. 2 goblin merchants, giant porcupine pack animal. Sell cooking equipment, linens, knife sharpening (will try to steal magic daggers they're given to sharpen)
5. Petulant ogre, two empty tuns, nursing wretched hangover.
6. D8 gnomes, probably convinced players stole something from them.
7. Purple worm!
8. Manticore and pet succubus, ended up here by mistake.
9. 2d12 zombies, organizing potion cupboard.
10. Vampire, stuck in mist form.
I could keep going all day. I'll use the note I wrote if it seems interesting in the moment or just throw for reaction.
After monsters are done it's time for traps. There's two types of traps: recent and occult. Recent traps were made and maintained by denizens. These include most genial booby traps.
Occult traps are maintained by nobody. They operate according to inscrutable laws of anti-physics, and exist for no reason other than their own sadistic glee. They may have been spawned as artistic expressions by the dungeon itself, by the original builders, or at some point in forgotten history it doesn't matter. These include glowing tiles that teleport you 3 feet down, urns that incinerate anything placed within, and cracked windows that hold back a flood of black water.
Specials are when things get really weird. Usually they're not as dangerous as traps, but potentially dangerous. A painting that inserts itself into your memories, a statue that insists you have a tea party with it, a room where it's constantly raining, or a tree that answers questions about botany, or a machine that turns meat into metal, or a metal vat containing liquidized ghosts It's stuff to tinker with or find a way to leverage to your benefit. Or avoid.
I usually do empty rooms last because they're the most difficult. By definition empty rooms aren't barren - they just don't contain monsters, traps, or specials. I find it difficult to write descriptions of rooms that don't do anything, so I usually just cram them with nonsense furniture, broken machines, moldering books, broken masonry, tools, furniture, alters, etc. I should probably write some tables to automate this. If a dungeon dies on the operating table it's probably because I can't think of stuff that's boring but still interesting.
There. That's my method. Somewhere along the line everything starts falling into place. Reasons, meanings, hooks, rumors, but it doesn't need to. A dungeon doesn't exist for players to loot it, or to serve some outside purpose. Dungeons exist to keep things away from the world, to imprison things better forgotten, and to hide, sulk, ooze, and mangle. I don't care if players can't clear it, and I don't care if they nuke it from the atmosphere, and I don't care if the local lizardmen come and fill it up with black puddings after the players leave.
My motto is: the world isn't here to entertain you. If you come to my game you should know that you're here to entertain yourself with this weird little puzzle box I make in my free time.
I find the best art is made by the artist, for the artist, not her expected audience. My favorite musicians are shut ins with no dreams of fame. My favorite writers shriek with glee at their own stupidity. The game, to me, is figuring out what to do with this stuff and chasing obsessions and tangents into places you can't go if you planned it that way.
Happy corpses.
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