My current campaign is set in a city with a massive, shifting dungeon underneath it. This was a deliberate choice to help me get better at dungeon design. One of the hardest parts of making a dungeon for me has been the layout so I developed these steps to help out. I came up with this process piecemeal while taking this dungeon design course by the blog Rise Up Comus.
Step 1
Roll several times on the following "table", depending on how big of a dungeon you want, each circle is a room and each line a connection.
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| From: bite-sized dungeons |
Step 2
Roll 1d6 - 1d6, add or subtract that many rooms at random from the dungeon.
Step 3
For every unconnected piece of the dungeon connect it to another random part of the dungeon, selecting one random room from each section to connect them by.
Step 4
Add 1d6-2 connections between rooms, if you get a negative value don't subtract any connections.
Step 5 (optional)
Roll on the following tables for each room to determine their shape and size.
Room shape (I roll twice and take whichever I like more)
1 Square
2 Circle
3 Rectangle
4 Polygon (2+1d6 if you want to randomize it)
5 Irregular
6 Actually a corridor
Room size
1-2 4x4 or less
3-5 Around 6x6
6 More than 9x9
It's a bit of an eccentric system and once the dungeon is done it usually doesn't really resemble whatever this generated but it helps to get me started.
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| As a last minute edition I decided to add an example to make this process a little more clear but if it's still confusing I can clarify it further, please excuse my handwriting |
