just ivy's blog 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ 💚

let’s build a dungeon together - part 1 | loot, factions, & history

12/7/2024

the first post in the series

when i’m building a dungeon, i usually follow this workflow:

big picture planning -> mapping -> keying

this post is going to cover the big picture planning, and it’s going to do it by focusing on loot, factions, & history.


i’ve found, personally, that having a foundational knowledge of a dungeon’s loot, factions, & history means that i can answer any creative question about the dungeon-building process.

here’s an blank room. what goes there?

well, i have this magic item that i want to put in the dungeon, so maybe that! and i know that a spell-gone-wrong caused widespread cave-ins in the dungeon 300 years ago, so maybe the goblins and the bandits haven’t found it yet.

so let’s get to it! i usually brainstorm loot, factions, & history in that order, but it’s not a straightjacket. often i’ll have some idea for a historical event that will make me go back and change the loot list, etc.

loot

loot is by far the most technical category to plan. after this, we won’t be doing much math in this post.

there’s multiple schools of thought you could subscribe to when planning the loot for your dungeon. probably the most conventional way would be to pick your monsters and seed treasure based on their treasure types.

i’ve also seen it done where you take the level of your dungeon (in a megadungeon, this would be the actual rank of the level, but here it will just be the average HD of denizens there), assume a party of 4 PCs at that level, and figure out how much treasure they’d need to advance to the next level.

so if you were intending this dungeon for 4 lvl 3 PCs, they’re going to need an average of ~16k XP, depending on their class composition, to become a party of 4 lvl 4 PCs. that means they should expect to be able to find ~16k gp-worth of treasure after a thorough, but not necessarily complete, exploration of the dungeon.

an alternate system would be to key each dungeon level in a level-agnostic way. you place treasure based on some guidelines, but you’re not tailoring it to a specific party composition.

i personally do things the third way, so that’s what i’ll be doing in this series. i think it feels more in-line with the OSR spirit, despite being the source texts demonstrably supporting the first two methods. in my megadungeon, levels can be visited in almost any order, so ranking them ahead of time makes little sense to me. and every dungeon level is going to have secrets, optional areas, and powerful monsters. all of which contain treasure, and which we won’t be expecting the PCs to overcome (though we’d love it if they do!). and those areas make the dungeon worth it for a high-level party.

besides, the expectation is that a party will need to run multiple delves to “clear” the dungeon, so the DM has many chances to restock the dungeon to either increase or decrease potential treasure.

wow, i did not stock enough treasure for this party! well, they just killed the giant spider that’s been plaguing the southern caves. i was already planning on having a new faction move in to that unclaimed territory, and i’ll make sure to key more treasure there.

so how much treasure to actually put into the dungeon? i usually go for ~15k gp that i can expect the PCs to at least be aware of, plus an additional 1-50k that they will probably never know exists (yes, that is a huge range. the higher end should be used sparingly, but it should be used).

additionally, we’ve got to stock magic items. this is definitely my favorite part of the loot section. i have a personal list of homebrew magic items that i regularly expand with new ideas, but for this series i’m sticking to the book. the number of magic items that you stock is up to you, but i like to stock 2-4 proper magic items, plus a few scrolls and potions.

factions

ordinarily, my factions would be informed by the broader context of the dungeon. but, since the design goal here is to create a generically-applicable example dungeon, i’m going to modify my usual thought process. namely, i’m going to go with Justin Alexander’s excellent Goblin Ampersand.

as a rule, i like to aim for three factions to a dungeon level. as with everything, that’s not a straightjacket. but it’s a manageable number of things to track, and three is the minimum number of factions at which politics is interesting, so i like to start with three. often i’ll follow the below archetypes:

so let’s start with the main faction. i’ll go with a necromancer, because i like them and i think we need more of them. for the “ampersand”, i’ll flip through the monster list… hellhounds sound good. a necromancer with an undead army and a pack of hellhounds. we can flesh them out later, that should be enough description to get started.

for the opposition, i like the idea of a rogue apprentice. maybe they’re the elemental sorceror who first bound the hellhounds to their master’s will? but they’ve been denied the secrets of immortality too long, and tried to take their master’s power for their own. the coup failed, and now there’s a war in the dungeon.

for the independent, i think i’m going to go for a “faction” of one powerful entity. like Shelob or Smaug. flipping through the chapter on monsters once more and… i like the sound of Gorgon.

history

here, too, i would ordinarily go off of broader context when brainstorming dungeon history. in the absence of that, i usually like to fill in the following blank timeline:

  1. a long time ago, someone or something creates the basis of the dungeon
    • who? why? was there a resource here that they were after?
  2. something happens, and the original builders are killed or driven off
    • what happened? did the dwarves delve too deep?
  3. lots of time passes, with the dungeon relatively abandoned
    • why was it not repopulated?
  4. eventually, someone or something reinhabits the ruin
    • who? why them? why now?

every step in the above timeline will impact our dungeon design. chambers will be built, modified, lost to cave-ins, and rediscovered as the ages wear on.

for our dungeon, i’m going to go with an old classic: dwarves. going through my above questions:

  1. a long time ago, a clan of dwarves discovered a rich silver vein and began mining out the dungeon. as dwarves are wont to do, they also created miracles of craftsdwarfship. self-resetting traps, automatons, and mechanical animals all patroled the fortress, keeping it safe.

  2. but eventually, the constructs turned on their creators, and the dwarves were wiped out. the fortress remained inhabited by these mechanical horrors, and nobody moved back in for a long time.

  3. eventually, even bronze corrodes, and most of the constructs broke down. a powerful necromancer discovered this, and set up shop in the old ruin.

so we’re going to have lots of devious dwarven traps, rusted husks of mechanical soldiers, and now we know why our Gorgon is wandering the halls! the last mad construct of a dead clan of dwarves.

so in summary

our dungeon will have:

okay! we have a decent, if unoriginal, foundation for a really enjoyable dungeon. writing this post took me a few days, but that’s because i’m a slow writer. if you were just following the method to come up with a dungeon concept, it probably wouldn’t take more than an hour, even if you were being significantly more creative than i am being here.

next time: mapping! my favorite part of creating a dungeon! a link will go here once the post is written.