5 Tips to Help You Plan Your First Dungeon

“I don’t like the look of this.” Sefereth whispers.

You look back at the slender elven woman. She wears plate armor as if it weighed nothing, a great sword in her hand.

You smile. “You are wise as you are lovely my dear.” Your hands grasp each others, a brief moment of affection between man and wife. It was only a tenday since you and your beloved were wed. Others might decide to honeymoon in large cities surrounded by luxury. For your band of adventurers, emergency necessitated other arrangements.

You turn your attention back to the entrance to the dungeon. You’ve never seen anything like it. Where other caves might have moss and lichen growing on the rock face, crystal the color of pearly moonlight adorns the walls. It appears as if grown there rather than placed. It has a strange feeling of life.

Your party was brought here by rumors of an elixir that can cure any disease along with huge swaths of the kingdom falling ill to an unknown disease. Rather than rendering the sick feeble and weak, it swells their muscles and drives their minds mad. They become mutated monsters, wreaking havoc on all they come in contact with. The kingdom is made up of more monsters than man now and it’s up to you and your friends to save it. As usual.

A soft music drifts from the cave's entrance, almost as if to invite you in. You look at the rest of your party. Each looks at you with undying loyalty. You grip your staff harder, and place a hand around the necklace of beads left to you from your mother. She left it to you as a legacy to remember her by. You use it as a magical focus to channel your arcane energies and to bend reality to your will.

“We go forth to save those who cannot save themselves,” you say and you step into the cave.

Welcome back to the 6th episode of How to Be a Better DM. I’m here to help you tell better stories as you dungeon master a nice game of Dungeons and Dragons 5e.

Before we get into today’s show, another quick shout out to @kahootaz on Instagram who does audio work for the show. He is awesome and if you need any audio work done, he’s the guy.

Now, to the show.

Today we are talking about crafting dungeons. This is a staple of playing D&D and definitely a go-to for DM’s everywhere. Whether you’re playing from a adventure book, or are crafting your own story, adding in a dungeon here and there is always a great way to break up all the quests your characters are on and give them something concrete and tangible to do. So let’s get to 5 tips for crafting dungeons.

Start with the purpose of the dungeon.

Said another way, figure out what your players’ purpose will be in the dungeon. In the example at the beginning of the episode, the purpose is clear: find the healing elixir. In my current campaign with my friends, they were sent to clear out a haunted mansion so the mansion could be set up as an orphanage. Basically set up the rules of engagement. Answer the questions of why are the players here and what are the general rules for how they will engage with the environment.

Set a Big Boss

Dungeons get much easier to make if you model them after most video games. For every level there is a boss. Sometimes this could be in the form of puzzles or the form of an adversary. In my current campaign (spoiler alert if you are my friend and are playing my campaign which I don’t think anyone here is), the big boss in the haunted mansion is an undead beholder who’s fooled a woman to marry him and is using her love for him to fuel the haunted mansion. I personally like it when the Boss is an adversary, but a difficult puzzle that also causes damage can be just as fun.

Pick a theme

Often this will come with either the purpose of the dungeon or the big boss. This makes the puzzles and the smaller enemies easier to pick. It’s not hard finding what to fill your dungeon with. It’s just hard choosing what not to fill it with. Let’s take the scenario at the beginning of the episode. The cave the group would be going into would probably have some sort of crazy archfey at the end, so most of the baddies they fight would probably be fey or dreamlike in nature. That doesn’t mean you can’t stray, it just helps you narrow down what most of the enemies will be like.

Record the map

You can either use a map someone else created, draw one yourself beforehand or draw one on the spot while you are playing (though I don’t recommend this one), but you have to have a map. Why? Because your players will get lost, and you will get lost, and the story will get lost. Seriously. Your players may want to go back to check things out, they may want to try multiple paths, and it will make the game feel way more immersive. I pulled the map for my haunted mansion off of Patreon. There’s a lot of content out there so just go find it.

Pick your Puzzles

Believe me when I say that having your players face encounter after encounter after encounter can get very tedious, both for you and for your players. In encounters, helping them get into the story is really hard. That usually comes in between combat encounters. That’s not to say it’s impossible. It’s just a lot easier for the players to actually sit and think about the story when a particular puzzle is forcing them to do just that. You don’t have to have lots of puzzles, just enough to break up the monotony of encounters after encounters. And don’t worry. I am not good at thinking up puzzles either. I just looked some up online and tweaked them to fit my campaign and voila. It’s an interesting puzzle without making me become Einstein.

So remember, if you’re new to crafting dungeons, have fun with it, and you can look most things up online. Everything, just BS on the fly.

Thanks for listening to today’s episode.

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Lastly, reach out to on Instagram @geronimolevis to ask questions, give suggestions, or tell how your campaign is going because I would love to know. Thanks for listening guys and until next time, let’s roll initiative.

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