Thursday, September 28, 2017

Quirky Dungeon Generator

Tables, tables are good, let's do some tables for a Dungeon. This is silly but my games are all kinda silly and abstract. I have an image to keep up.
You could roll these all together and have some really wack results, I might expand on my own rolls later. Feel free to pick and choose what you like, as I know that's what you'll do anyway.

The Dungeon Theme


1. Fire/Water/Earth/Sauce Elemental Gimmick: Predictable, but predictable can be good, having an obvious theme lets your players prepare.

2. Sound/Music Dungeon: Entire rooms are musical instruments (great idea for a giant bell trap). Sound Elementals, manic bards blasting avant-garde music, normal monsters but also screaming.

3. Wizard Brothel Dungeon: Clouds of perfume, pillows all over everything.Wizards can live a long time, get ready for very esoteric fetishes. Including your standard dungeon perils.

4. Living dungeon: Maybe it's trying to eat you, maybe it's a big magic snake that you need to cure of food poisoning. Lots of acid damage, shifting rooms, and parasites that serve as random encounters.

5. Advanced Technology Dungeon: Goblins have found plasma weapons, giant "strange iron golems" that are totally not robots, extremely valuable and fragile machinery lying about everywhere. Terrible super weapons are released on the world via tempting control consoles and buttons.

6. Manlove Dungeon: A chapel dedicated to all things physically fit and beautiful, in the Ancient Greek sense. Arm wrestling tournaments for loot, sentient mirror doors complement your built glutes. Animate muscular statues ignore the player with the most STR and CHA to motivate the others to get in shape. There's a post coming about The Church of Manlove, they deserve one.

7. A Vein To The Wood Mines: Deep roots of a massive tree or underground plant are harvested here. Fight the Shepard Dorfs and their metal flocks. St. C'thpert leads the wood mining orphans in prayers and stranger lynching. The rocks are saturated with life-essence, and they have needs. Weird, eldritch, unterdark stuff goes here.

8. Warehouse Dungeon: Storage for something, lots of crates full of basically anything. Go buck wild with random tables. Stored exotic foods have spoiled and created mini ecosystems in different aisles.

9. Prison Dungeon: Something's locked up here, the lame choice is demons. The cool choice is imprisoned ideas, or something strange like thousands of locked up pigeons. Who locked up all these pigeons? Why? Should they be released? No matter what, expect giant construct wardens and panopticons.

10. Lush and living forest-y dungeon. Massive trees, ferns, or mushrooms. Colorful megafauna or maybe just a bunch of weird flightless birds. Terrible, terrible diseases, rotting your flesh as soon as a wound opens. Ticks that bite through plate armor and dig in deep, towards the vital organs. Mind controlling fungus spores.

11. Flavor-cultist dungeon. Is it too early for me to be making call backs to earlier ideas? Probably. Mounds of leftovers come to life. Demons demand to know where you put the hell-lamb sauce. Enslaved interns need help with dishes, as their taste buds have been excised.

Salvador Dali
12.  Surrealist Dungeon: Every dimension has been twisted wrong, including the 4th. Walking on the floor feels like purple. Play with stuff like synesthesia: When your players enter a room, give them a flavor of something instead of a description. Perhaps time doesn't flow right here, start the party at the end of the dungeon, and make them trace their way back. Perhaps the entire dungeon is the psyche of the players, and they must fight their own existential dreads made malleable.

The Dungeon's Gimmick


1. It's relatively safe when you go in, just full of clues of what's going on. But when you find the treasure/ancient evil/terrible secret, escaping becomes super dangerous (all the traps/monsters/waterwheels activate)

2. There's a terrible nigh-invincible monstrosity roaming around, but there's probably a secret to beating it somewhere inside.

3. There's a power source running throughout the place, it can be dangerous (electrocution, magical radiation, burns) but manipulating it can open new areas or frag monsters.

4. The dungeon has a time limit. Maybe it floods during high tide, maybe it's slowly dissolving you, or the entrance/exit is only open during the total eclipse.

5. Environmental requirements on equipment. The laser traps won't activate if your head is covered, the ghosts accept anyone who is well dressed enough for their dinner party. Pacifism fields will not allow anyone to enter who is carrying a weapon.

6. Parts of the dungeon move, either as part of a puzzle, to help you progress, or just to make things really complicated.

7. There are competing factions, races, or ecosystems in the dungeon, that can be pitted against each other, or may have thing that are needed to fully explore.

8. Everything in the dungeon is some kind of imitation. If it's full of life, everything is actually mechanics or clockwork. Or the stone ruins are all fleshy and living underneath.


Dungeon Entrance:

1. The foot of a carved mountain. Ancient, blocky gods carved out of stone watch your passage. Ghosts speak violence through water filled gullies.

2. Underwater cavern, in a lake or ocean. I don't care which. Underwater caves scare the shit out of me.

3. A door on the flat side of a very high plateau. There are no stairs and very scarce footholds. Scaffolding, anyone?

4. There is a secret door into the dungeon via the wizard's bookshelf. The secret switch is in his bathtub.

5. The passage way into the dungeon only exists as a small drawing, which must be found and drawn accurately on a wall to form an actual door.

6. A trapdoor buried in the sand on a beach somewhere.

7. A door in the mouth of a sentient tree. It needs to be convinced of a good reason to let you into what it thinks is a home for someone (it's not sure who). Unless you give a good reason (door to door salesmen, traveling preachers of a nature god, an invitation etc.) it will loudly tell everyone in the dungeon you are arriving, what you look like, and some guess on what you'll do. The tree is a great judge of character and has a pretty sound understanding of adventurer tactics.

8. Bottom of a well in the middle of a small village. The townspeople know about it, and they don't want you fucking around with it. You could fuck up the water supply or bring what is ever down there, up here.

9. A cave inside a massive, floating iceberg. It can be used by the inhabitants as means of defense (for obvious reasons), or perhaps it acts like a giant floating fortress, raiding islands, ships, and coastal towns as it drifts by them.

10.The entrance is only made manifest after completing a list of strange and dangerous actions all across the city. Murder someone, leave a piece of fruit by the noble's bed table, carve a obscene gesture into the wall of the church, etc. etc. Once you are finished, there will be a building in town that was never there before, but nobody seems to notice.

11. They thirteenth grave in the unmarked beggar's lot holds the secret. Be buried inside and wake up inside the dungeon. After you suffocate to death first.

12. An eternal flame, as large as a bonfire, rests by an old road. It is a shrine to some nameless saint. Passing through the fire will teleport you inside.

Dungeon Shape:

1. Standard branched paths to explore, like tree roots or a mine.
2. Tessellating geometry.
3. A biiiig circle, or better yet, a Lemniscate (basically a long repeating hallway, perhaps it keeps generating encounters? )
4. A rough spiral. Perhaps it branches off into more spirals?
5. Open floor plan dungeon. Lots of non-permanent barriers to divide rooms. You can see bad stuff from far away, but they can usually see you. Fashionable.
6. Large, 3D shape, a floating globe to explore, or maybe a pyramid of some kind. Usually pretty big, but the shape usually helps with finding your direction.

Strange Rooms/Random Oddities:
1. The Living Paintings: Works of art come alive, landscapes change the terrain, portraits try to drag you in, abstract pieces pull and cut you apart, their lines becoming sharp. They want you to add a piece to the collection, an easy way to escape, but you've given them a new weapon to use against their next victims.
2. A shrine to the God of Cool Bugs. Offerings of rad bugs hiding throughout the place will yield boons and blessings.

3. The room of expectation. A massive black obelisk door sealed with chains. It will be locked shut, unless the door hears speculation on what is behind it. Whatever is speculated will be made true. Vague guesses like "great treasure" will come back to bite them in the ass. Forcing the door will only lead to more locked doors.

4. A large circular room or set of rooms, a trail of blood and conflict is rife throughout all of them. A talented investigator loops through this area, following the trail. It is his own trail however, he is stuck in an temporal loop. He is brilliant and a good conversationalist, but has no clue what is happening to him.

5. A vending machine which sells rations, refreshments, and some potions and other goodies. It doesn't take your coins, however, only a specific currency only found around the dungeon.

6.A simple stone controller panel attached to the wall. It lets you control a large metal golem somewhere else in the dungeon. But there's no way to see the golem from the room with the controller.

7. A pizza oven, lit, with an assortment of toppings to put on some ready made dough. No tricks to this one. Just pizza role-play, if the adventurers are hungry and trusting enough.

8. Stone portcullis that enchants those who cross it with color-blindness. The only way to break the spell is to rub a purple rose upon your eyes. The following room is full of different color roses.


Unique Treasure: 
1. Skin Needle, when you sew your clothes with it, it pulls your skin apart to use as thread. It deals 1d6 damage to you, leaving uncomfortable cuts around your fingers. However, clothing sewn with this will spring back with hot blood-wire the first time it is struck, dealing 1d6 to a melee attacker. If it is a ranged attacker, the torn skin sews up your own wound, healing for 1d4. You will need to re-sew the clothes after every use.

2. A revolver, loaded with 6 different bullets. They all look the same, and the only way to tell what each one does is to fire it:
[1] Where ever it hits creates a 30' square of noxious gas. Fort save or spend the next turn retching and puking. [2] A BANG flag comes out of the gun cartoon-style. [3] The bullet is alive, dealing normal damage on impact, but begins tearing into the flesh, doing an additional 1d6 every turn on  a living target until it is dug out. [4] The bullet is coated in an old, very deadly disease. It's so old people aren't really immune to it anymore, so it's probably gonna spread. [5] The bullet flops out of the gun, right in front of you. Inside is a small note with a encouraging message. [6] The bullet disappears after being fired, but will return in a moment of need for the owner of the gun, saving their life by hitting someone/or something relevant.

3. A large book, sections of stoneware bottles are hidden in cut out compartments inside. The bottles are filled with deadly poisons. Previously owned by a famous assassin.

5. Scroll of Make Bananas Immovable. (Ala immovable rod)

6. A drinking horn of "infinite wine", covered in painted pictures of thieves. The horn actually pulls wine from the stockades of the great barbarian warlord HAUL-THE-DEAD, and he will be very unhappy when he finds out about it.


Other Explorers:
1. Mike Windfield: a level 1 bard. Dirty clothes, dirty blond hair, dirty mind. Cheery and kind of an idiot, with an almost suicidal tendency to get in trouble. Wields a guitar with a very dangerous version of a rod of wonder attached to it. Carrying expensive food rations but precious little other survival gear. He's looking for babes. If you are kind to him at all he'll follow you around making too much noise and touching everything. If you are mean to him he'll do the same.

2. BennĂ© Craywcth'ta: Level 2 fighter, leather armor, calm demeanor. Looking for work and a wife. Is very tall and wields a large long sword. He carries an old but technically advanced revolver, but it has no ammunition.  If he likes ya he'll share jokes and advice about the area, if you piss him off probably just tell you to "cool it".

3. Jebirdiah Zha: Level 1 wizard. Wears merchant class business clothes. Alcoholic. Came here looking for ancient secrets, lost her group, now just wants a drink. Always had more charisma than innate talent. Suave and friendly, but otherwise pretty useless now. Carries three random wands, and full bartender's set, with a few bottles of expensive liquor.

4. LOSE-THE-FRIENDS: Level 5 ork barbarian. Last of member of a very cruel tribe, but that tribe was wiped out, and LOSE-THE-FRIENDS was raised by decent people instead. Wears bear furs. Very friendly, but not too bright. Cries when he fights, and hates violence, though he is quiet good at it. Wields a massive stone table, treat as a great hammer in his hands. Is looking for another ork, as he has never seen one yet. Carries fresh meat, some javelins, and a stuffed animal.

5. Simiale, a sentient suit of armor, patrols these halls. It wields a matching sword and shield to its shiny brass armor. Very polite, and speaks in a manner that is hard to place. Distressed, and asks you to confirm if it really is a floating suit of armor (it already knows, but keeps asking people out of  desperate denial). Looking for a way to end its' curse, or even just answers about its past. It remembers a knight who wore the armor that it now is, but cannot remember if it was the knight put into the armor, or the armor itself come alive. Carries little but a locket with a portrait inside, but the face has been rubbed away.

6. Veddrick Balentine: Slick black hair, and noble robes. Insists on you calling him "Veddy". Terrible person who is looking to rob you as soon as he can. Carries a slick black knife of +1, a crossbow with 20 bolts, and a vial of paralyzing poison. Has little food or gold and is becoming desperate. Runs away after being hit once, but will guerilla you for the rest of the dungeon, and maybe even further after that, if you are wealthy enough.