Dungeon Creation

[Ganryu]

Yo. I'm a GM, trying to create a dungeon for players. It's weird, I've played 5e for years, I can create some decent campaigns and such, but I've never been good at creating an actual dungeon crawl, despite it being in the name of the game. (Plenty of dragon's though!)

Anyone have any good resources they'd suggest, or tips that make their tables work well, or favorite traps/riddles they'd like to share?

I'm asking general questions, so probably getting general answers, but its a party of 5 at lvl 5, Bard, artificer, sorcerer, druid, and warlock. Only the sorcerer is a new player, rest are pretty experienced. We normally have 4 hour sessions. Normally been doing combat as just 1 or two per session, but they know I'm doing this crawl a bit different ahead of time. I want to make a fun dungeon!

[MrStabby]

I start off with an idea for the purpose for the building.

So a mine, a library, a prison, a storage vault, treasure room, a bathhouse, temple, fortification or whatever.

Then I add the creator race/faction. And then look at what is living there now (which may be the same)

Build the rooms to reflect the function - so for it's purpose what rooms should be there? Say for the bathhouse example you would need bathing rooms, a furnace, a store room, an atrium, a water source and so on. Think of cool versions there - so the furnace would be powered by a portal to elemental fire, the water would come from plane of water, there would be golems as attendents... Who built the bathhouse? Say gnomes - some good excuses for narrow pasageways, lots of gadgets, signs for people who know the language and so on.

Then add a feature to the set up. So if it is abandoned, then why? What happened? Maybe some clues, a bit of mystery? So start simple - rade through the portal to the plane of fire to snatch a patron of the bathhouse, culmnating in the slaughter of everyone else there. Party then has some clues scattered around about who was taken, why and all the elementals from both fire and water broken free are at war with each other.

So then you should have a whole bundle of rooms, a story, clues, a plot hook... now add some set piece encounters. Work out some things that are cool environmental effects, specific challenges, or similar - say water wierds invisible in water, the party needing to push past periodic steam jets to avoid being scalded, slippy flagstones, instructions on how to run the furnace needing some checks... Depending on game style put things in that let your party use their special abilities - so druids can benefit from wildshapes with swim speeds, maybe some great strength checks for a barbarian or whatever.

So, at this point you should have a nice set of rooms. Whork out which yourbiggest hardest encounter are - spread them out. Work out which rooms should be able to reinforce each other - then link up using hallways.

This is roughly my thought process for most things like this.

[MaxWilson]

Yo. I'm a GM, trying to create a dungeon for players. It's weird, I've played 5e for years, I can create some decent campaigns and such, but I've never been good at creating an actual dungeon crawl, despite it being in the name of the game. (Plenty of dragon's though!)

Anyone have any good resources they'd suggest, or tips that make their tables work well, or favorite traps/riddles they'd like to share?

I'm asking general questions, so probably getting general answers, but its a party of 5 at lvl 5, Bard, artificer, sorcerer, druid, and warlock. Only the sorcerer is a new player, rest are pretty experienced. We normally have 4 hour sessions. Normally been doing combat as just 1 or two per session, but they know I'm doing this crawl a bit different ahead of time. I want to make a fun dungeon!

Dungeon crawls are a popular and enduring game structure partly because they are easy to create and run in a fun way, even for twelve-year-old novice DMs who have never played D&D before. (Theory behind that is here: https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/15140/roleplaying-games/game-structures-part-3-dungeoncrawl)

The key idea that makes it fun: players never run out of stuff to do. Even if they can't think of anything interesting to do in their current location (map room with moving miniatures, underwater toilet, summoning room) they can always just take one of the doors to a different room. Often they will discover monsters or treasure.

Just use https://kobold.club to build a few encounters, add some treasure and make about 1/3 of it obvious and 2/3 concealed or hidden behind secret does or currently in use by monsters, and you'll have a fun time. There's definitely more to learn (dungeons with multiple entrances are fun) but you won't mess up.

Also here's a bunch of cool ideas for you to peruse: https://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/p/trick-trap-index.html?m=1

I particularly like the Illusionary Corridor idea. The idea is to invert the situation so the normal "correct" reaction is actually dangerous, while setup giving enough clues to preserve fairness/agency. Say the players are in a dangerous area (say a narrow wooden bridge over a 30' drop) and a threat like a giant stone boulder is rumbling towards them over the solid, unmoving bridge. "What do you do?" Of course it turns out that the boulder is just a Programmed Illusion, which is why it doesn't strain the bridge, and those who hurled themselves off the bridge, accepting 3d6 falling damage to avoid much worse damage from the onrushing boulder, now find themselves trapped below until their comrades can lower a rope. Did I mention that there's a Gelatinous Cube silently and near-invisibly lurking below the bridge waiting for victims?

[Zhorn]

For single session dungeons, the "5 room dungeon" model is a good frame to build from.
There are countless videos online going in depth about the nitty-gritty of building them, so I'd suggest watch a couple for a better explanation, but in general;

pick a theme (something that suits where in the campaign your players are, or will be)

pick a shape
https://i.warosu.org/data/tg/img/0461/82/1458684802979.png

link in case image doesn't load for you: https://i.warosu.org/data/tg/img/0461/82/1458684802979.png
draw a map to fit or download a pre-existing map and impose your shape/room order onto it (there are thousands of 5 room dungeons in google image search, and plenty of generators)

Populate your 5 rooms (there doesn't need to be exactly 5 room, more like 5 key components to the dungeon).
Different lists and guides frame this part to be built on more that 5 options
1 major conflict (eg: entrance guardian, boss in a lair)
1 setback (eg: trap, trick, alarm, minor combat with minions)
1 non-combat event (eg: roleplay, puzzle, riddle, skill challenge)
1 choice (eg: red herring, diverging paths, betrayal)
1 end room (eg: reward, revelation, twist, mcguffin, escape)
pick 5 things, one for each of five key locations in the dungeon

For larger dungeons with a lot more rooms or multiple levels, connect a few 5-room-dungeons together.

[Man_Over_Game]

A big element I'd suggest to include into every room:

Something on the walls (a clue, a piece of history, a ritual spell, etc.).

Something environmental that both sides of combatants can interact with (spiders start with spider webs against the players, players can set said webs on fire).

Something that hints towards an upcoming aspect in another room (such as signs of a trap, or a specific type of enemy). Even if these future events actually already occurred (like the party already killed the Dragon that left the scorchmarks in the back room they're now investigating), they show the dungeon is an organic, living place that existed long before the players made it relevant.

And make the enemies use the location's vantage points. They live here, so they'd use the dungeon to their advantage, although try to avoid leveraging too many surprise mechanics like Ambushes, as these often cut down on player agency. Try to telegraph these upcoming surprises early on.

You may want your enemies to still be fairly lethal, but rather than providing few or no clues (to keep the element of surprise), make them more obscure and harder to identify their cause (for example, signs of a Dragon might actually be caused by feral, mutant Dragonborn). This tells players that any plans they develop in response to their clue was a coincidence of their actions rather than the DM's lack of information. They took a response towards a clue, and it either paid off or it didn't, but either way it will feel like it's the player's fault rather than the game's, and that's good game design.

[Zhorn]

A big element I'd suggest to include into every room:

Something on the walls (a clue, a piece of history, a ritual spell, etc.).
For OP, the DMG tables for random dungeons dressings are awesome for this. Any time your are stuck on what to do with a room, roll a few d100's and look at what it gives you. A couple of random details can really get the ball rolling on what to do with that room, either tell you about its purpose, or a history of what has happened there in the recent past. You don't need to have a huge write up for these details, just a couple of dot-points and suddenly the rooms are alive with story potential, be it designed by you ahead of time, adhoc'd in at a spur of the moment, or fleshed out by PC speculation on what it could mean.


Something that hints towards an upcoming aspect in another room (such as signs of a trap, or a specific type of enemy). Even if these future events actually already occurred (like the party already killed the Dragon that left the scorchmarks in the back room they're now investigating), they show the dungeon is an organic, living place that existed long before the players made it relevant.
One thing I like to do for either introductory dungeons, or higher tier deadly dungeons, is have a corpse of another adventurer near the start of a trapped hallway or one room removed from the main lair room of the next encounter. Signs of death clearly indication the types of injuries they should expect from the next challenge. Also a good way to insert some convinient loot when you think the help might be warranted.
example: a corpse sliced in two at the waist separating the legs from the torso, indicating a scything blade trap that swings out from the walls. In their backpack are a couple of antitoxin vials; telling a story of this adventurer having prepared for an encounter with a poisonous enemy.

[Vegan Squirrel]

Others have already covered some good points, and I'm not an expert by any means, but here are my thoughts.

First, the link to the original 5-Room Dungeon (https://www.roleplayingtips.com/5-room-dungeons/) source, which was already mentioned.

Think about what you want the experience of exploring the dungeon to feel like. Identify that feeling, and then you can try to figure out a way to make that kind of feeling happen through the design. The senses help here, maybe they hear moaning echoing through the distant caverns, maybe it's eerily quiet, or the smell of brimstone fills the air. Try not to take away player agency by forcing them into situations, just try to set them up.

Stealing maps was already mentioned, but borrow anything cool you like from other sources. I sometimes look to the feel of Zelda dungeons for inspiration. And you can blend together a few different inspirations to create something neat that's less recognizable to players.

And finally, think about whether and how progress can be made by players who just want to fight everything, and by players that want to talk their way through things, or sneak past encounters. I can't recall who said somewhere to try to design things so any of the three pillars of play could get you through, but it's a useful way to think. That's not a hard and fast rule, especially when you know your players' preferences. But if, say, your dungeon sketch has a lot of combat, thinking about giving players something to do with social interaction and exploration can give you ideas (a prisoner? baddies who don't always get along? a sewer level that could be used for a sneakier infiltration?) which add variety and depth to the dungeon you end up with.

[Composer99]

A few questions to ask yourself:

(1) How linear do you want the experience to be? There's nothing wrong with either a more or less linear approach: it depends on your table's preference as a whole. Even in a linear dungeon crawl, you'll almost certainly want there to be some branching paths and sidetracks, maybe even looping paths - all speaking somewhat figuratively. In a less linear dungeon crawl such elements might be more literal than figurative.

(2) How many secrets do you want to have? How can the PCs find them? Having content locked behind secret doors and whatnot does mean having to be comfortable with the PCs missing out on it if they don't find it, which means the rest of the dungeon probably can't be unmanageable if they do miss out; by implication it does mean that PCs who are good about uncovering secrets will tend to better equipped to overpower the dungeon.

(3) Is there a "win condition" for the dungeon? What is it? Kill a specific enemy? Loot a specific treasure? Get from one end to the other? Stop the Doombringing Ritual of Doom™? This can relate to linearity: for instance, there might be multiple ways to get into the same room as the win condition, some of which might be easier than others.

(4) Is there a time limit on the dungeon crawl? Does the Doombringing Ritual of Doom™ happen if the PCs take too long?