Two Theme Dungeons - Quick Thematic Dungeon Design

07 Jul, 2024

Introduction

I struggle with making dungeons. Hexes are pretty simple (Even simpler with my Hex Stocking Procedure :P) but dungeons have always been difficult to me, primarily for two reasons:

• Consistency of Theme: I have a tendency to throw whatever I think of into dungeons, which is fine until I’m trying to evoke or capture a specific feeling or theme, in which case they become chaotic and rushed.
• Variety of content: when I can nail a theme, it feels like I can only write one or two rooms before everything becomes stale.

So I decided to sit down and try and come up with a method to make content for rooms in a way that kept a consistent theme. I tried to build upon my hex stocking procedure so as to create a parallel between overland travel and dungeon exploration, but that’s more for my own personal tastes than any best practice.

While I don’t think this will be hard to read if you haven’t, your reading experience will be enhanced if you’ve skimmed my hex stocking procedure post.

Themes

While I’m very partial to Four Theme Tables, I think that for smaller dungeons four themes is a bit too much. So we’ll go with two themes and a modifier (more on that in a bit!)

The themes probably work better when they’re in conflict to one another, or at least when they contrast one another. This creates places where there are markedly different things to interact with.

A modifier is what I’m calling some sort of quality that can be added or taken away from something (namely, our themes). Something like “Erosion” or “Collapse” might work well, while something like “Time” might be a bit too broad.

For simplicity’s sake, we’ll say that each modifier can have three modes, or intensities, ranging from minor to severe. Using “Erosion” as our modifier, we’d have one place that was minimally eroded, one that was mildly eroded, and one that was severely eroded.

Combining Themes and Creating Rooms

Let’s do some room creation! I’m currently working on a module called At the Base of Blue Mountain, and one of the dungeons is meant to take place in this large field that has craters and the ruins of old structures in it. The catch is that there’s a flying monster that attacks anyone who it can see from its tower full of valuables at the center of the field and your usual creepy crawlies that move into abandoned spaces are big and monstrous.

I’ve struggled with writing the rooms for it for a bit now, so to speed along the process we’ll use this procedure. One theme should probably be ”Disaster” and the other one ought to be “Rediscovery” since there have been other folks before our hypothetical adventurers who’ve come here in the right now. The modifier will be “Nature” to represent the creepy crawlies and general reclamation of the area after the disaster.

Now that we’ve got all that filled out, we can list each theme alongside each modifier and its intensities:

• Disaster, Nature Minimal
• Disaster, Nature Mild
• Disaster, Nature Severe
• Rediscovery, Nature Minimal
• Rediscovery, Nature Mild
• Rediscovery, Nature Severe

If you wanted, you could at this point apply some random stocking procedures for the contents of this room to further differentiate these. We’ll do the B/X one in keeping with the OSR lingua franca¹. that gives us:

• Disaster, Nature Minimal (Trap)
• Disaster, Nature Mild (Empty)
• Disaster, Nature Severe (Empty)
• Rediscovery, Nature Minimal (Empty)
• Rediscovery, Nature Mild (Special)
• Rediscovery, Nature Severe (Monster)

We can massage these themes until they become something that fits the world/aesthetic we’re going for. Here’s a quick stab at the content for these 6 rooms:

1. A canopic jar that miraculously survived through the ages here, beneath the remains of an archway. The pickled organs inside of the jar have rotted and become toxic; opening the jar spews fumes throughout the room. Below the organs in the jar is a large golden coin depicting a bearded old man in robes.
2. What was once the basement of a house now seems to have been overrun by vines and kudzu; it’s difficult to move through and has a 2-in-6 chance of tripping anyone running.
3. A cluster of shrbus stubbornly grows in the center of this crater; wild radishes and other tubers radiate outwards from the bush.
4. An adventurer’s cache, lodged between broken foundation stones. It’s contents along with the bag itself are horribly ravaged and torn to shreds.
5. The corpse of a person of wizardly report, vines and kudzu wrapped around his ankles and forearms. Touching him grants a person Entangle once per day, but they cannot go more than 24 hours without exposure to sunlight.
6. A recent campsite, ransacked and ravaged. The perpetrator, a starving Gullywug, waits in ambush in the vines which stretch across the ceiling.

But this is only 6 rooms! What if we wanted more?

One option is to bring in other themes, which is fine but might lead to more varied content. Another option would be to add another modifier. If you did this and then paired each theme with both modifiers (i.e. Theme A, Modifier 1, Modifier 2), you’d end up with 18 combinations, which is a bit bigger than what you’d normally expect from a dungeon.

Another option is to use a faction instead of a modifier, which could pair nicely with the two modifier system above and create areas of conflict and strong control between the two factions.

You might also use a monster as a modifier, especially when you’re making a lair or other monster den, although those don’t normally get fleshed out as much in my games.