Demonhop Tower

For Paul... because you can never have too many beer-themed dungeons.

Godsfoot

Knock twice.

Joe Bar

One of the complex and difficult things we've had to deal with this year at home is my daughter's transfer from one school to another in mid-year. One of the side-effects of this transfer is that I will be spending a lot less time at Joe Bar, one of Seattle's best coffee shops. This micro was drawn at the Joe Bar.

Wow

I debated posting this dungeon, as it's a bit, er... snarky. But that about sums up how I feel about Wow. Yes, an exercise bike hidden behind a shiny facade. Actually, I'll say this. The Dark Elf city is a worthy work of art in its own right.

The Underground Arena

Guess who's coming to dinner? 20 random people in the City of Nightport:

1. Endurance trainer for a mid-range gladiatorial house
2. Bright-eyed farm boy, looking to sign on as a competitor and win fame
3. Professional adventurer, here for the dungeons, thinks gladiators are putzes
4. Wizard, specializing in scrying and inter-team espionage
5. Manager of a gladiatorial team, sends crews into the dungeon for intense training
6. Scholar, looking for the lost under-arena
7. Promoter, always ready to pay coin for live rare beasts from the lower caves
8. Pack of rabid fans from an outlying province here for the annual tournament
9. Old, one-eyed retired gladiator, now makes a good living as a "consultant"
10. Halfling cook to a prominent former champion
11. Four-armed desert warrior, works a good "barbarian" act, but quite civilized
12. Scarred paladin, looking to recruit a party to retrieve remains of last party
13. Local merchant stocking exotic and magical weapons for arena and dungeon
14. Angry enchantress preparing her long-awaited revenge on another random NPC
15. Short-tempered duellist, very deadly but down on his luck
16. Maintenance worker responsible for keeping dungeons sealed and arena standing
17. Vampire masquerading as sport medicine specialist
18. Former champion gone to seed, slumming it and drunk, but still dangerous
19. Tourist with a ready sack of gold coins
20. Ghost of a former adventurer, doesn't know he's dead

Ronald

Ronald is a curious dungeon, given to bouts of dyspepsia. Steadfast and loyal, Ronald should not be attempted without a quantity of iron spikes.

The Magic Eight Ball

Adrienne collects magic eight balls, so this one is for her. Hi Adrienne!

And now, an insidious magic item for your campaign:

That Accursed Eight Ball

The Magic Eight Ball is an item with a storied history, associated with great successes and mishaps throughout history.

When you consult the Magic Eight Ball about some action, roll 1d8.

1. "Outlook Bad" Receive -1 to your next dice roll


2. "Yes" Character receives +1 to dice rolls as though under the effect of a bless spell


3. "No" The next significant action the PCs attempt will fail if it is at all reasonable for failure to occur.


4. "Absolutely" The next time the PCs attempt something dangerous, their attempt will fail in an unreasonable and apparently random fashion, as though someone had cast a wish spell to bring the failure about.


5. "Death" The consulting character immediately drops to 0 HP.


6. "Kaboom" The Eight Ball explodes, causing 3d6 to anyone close. The Eight Ball will appear again in another dungeon 1d100 miles away soon after.


7. "Answer unclear" Nothing happens. For the next 1d20 hours, this is the only answer that can be obtained from the Eight Ball


8. "Ask again" Character receives -1 (cumulative) to next dice roll, plus effects of any future Eight Ball rolls.

The Heartsmith

Have another city tile!

Fun facts about your neighborhood:

The heartsmith can make practically anything, as long as it's a heart. Like he make a metal clockwork heart that'll keep your dying lover alive for a while. He's pretty useless at making anything else.

The lost quarry isn't called that because it's lost, it's named that because the wizard it belonged to lost it in a card game. The new owner keeps himself completely wrapped in black bandages and never comes out during the day.

Gold Street is a good place to find a goldsmith. There's really nothing else weird about it.

The Purple Worm Graveyard

What happens when you read those weird, squiggly inscriptions written along the bottom of that wall? What if you kneel in front of the altar of light and let what comes, come? And when you try to cast that really hard spell and it goes horribly wrong?

You open your mind to the worm god. The worm god is an ancient chaotic entity whose domains include destruction, decay, hunger, compost, and gardening.

Roll 2D6 plus your CON hit point bonus.

• On a 10+, your mind is in contact with the Worm god and it shows you what you want then offers you a bargain or a gift.


• On a 7-9, you receive a true impression or vision of what you're interested in, but then suffer a temporary insanity.


• On a 6 or less, the DM decides what happens.

Temporary Insanities:

1. Fall on your hands and knees and start eating dirt voraciously for 1-4 rounds


2. Projectile vomiting for several minutes


3. You realize that somewhere, somehow, there's a worm in your body. You can feel it, but you can't tell where it is.


4. The Worm god has a command for you, and he's watching to make sure you carry it out!

This is a little tidbit from the con scenario that I ran and Sage ran at Go Play NW. Opening your mind to the Worm god is fun!

Shroomhenge

Crocodiles are pretty badass. Even out of water they can move fast. The ancient Romans feared them. Fantasy crocodiles are even worse. They're smarter, bigger, and meaner, and some have magic resistance. Although some crocodiles have the gift of speech, they rarely use for any other purpose than taunting their prey or luring it into a trap. In at least one account, crocodiles have been known to shadow an adventuring party, trying to provoke them into an ill-advised attack. Some crocodiles also live in symbiosis with will-o-wisps, who lead prey into deep mires where crocodiles can ambush them at their leisure.

The Third Lost Githyanki Space Dungeon

A strange artifact floating in an endless gulf, carries secrets of a forgotten magic.

A legendary threat resurfaces with terrifying results in a remote space dungeon.

The true cause of an ancient war lies hidden deep in the gulfs of limbo.

Equisite Corpse Dungeon Stocking

I have a lot of difficulty stocking dungeons, so for Go Play NW I’m devising an exquisite corpse dungeon stocking technique. It works like this:
Make three columns of words and phrases. Each column should have 12-20 items in it.

In the first column, list stuff you already know is probably going to be in your dungeon. I’m doing this with microdungeons, so it’s easy. I just look at the Barrow on the Hill map:



So in column 1 I put:
ancestors, swords, spite, bats, visions, crypt, mural, hunger, bone pit, tomb, maze, dome, standing stones

In column 2 I put thematic words, monsters, events, or themes that match the color I want my dungeon to have.

Column2:
death, skeletons, ambush, gnawing, haunted, wailing cries, entombed, forgotten, blindness, tomb robbers, spikes, shadow

In column 3 I put macguffins, dungeon tricks, plot twists, and other fairly generic adventury bits.

Column 3:
not what it seems, treasure is hidden, item is actually magic, monster wants something, treasure conceals a monster, room is cursed, moving walls and floors, PC’s ancestry is involved, swarms of monsters, monster is also a wizard, rod of paralysis, scrying magic

Now roll 1d10 on each column, writing down the phrases you get and crossing them off the list. The three phrases are your exquisite corpse. Write 1-2 sentences about what encounter or thing in the dungeon this corpse represents. Do this 6-10 times. Each corpse is sort of an oracle to devise one encounter.

So, for example: a roll of 1, 7, 2 = “ancestors” – “entombed” – “treasure is hidden”. I decide this means that the protecting ancestral spirits who once guarded the barrow have been bound to their bones, swept into the bone pit, and magically entombed. The treasure is that if released, one of the skeleton warriors will serve a party member until destroyed. Perhaps opening the pit is quite dangerous unless the PCs can figure out the correct spell or command word.

Second roll: 3, 2, 3 = “bats” – “skeleton” – “monster wants something”. I decide that the ghosts of lesser servants buried in the barrow have possessed the skeletons of a swarm of bats in the cave labeled bats on the map. These creatures have a mindless compulsion to complete some ancient task that may be to the PCs benefit or detriment. They will fight if prevented from completing their goal. I don’t know what the goal is yet. I’m going to wait until I roll some more stuff up and see something jumps out at me.

I've made three dungeon outlines this way, and I"m very pleased with the results!

Violence

The core of this dungeon is violence. Don't let the manipulations and ammednments distract you; it comes back to violence.

Atrium

The Faithful Illithid (his or her true name being unknown) served many masters with a diligence and neutrality that belied the reputation of the Illithid race. When, in time, fame brought too many sages, kings, wizards, and demons willing to pay even the Illithids exorbitant price, it retreated to another plane of existence where it continues its work in relative peace. But if your reputation is high enough, even a pocket dimension without entrance is no discouragement.

The Faithful Illithid still takes commissions from a variety of customers, provided the customer has the knowledge and power to reach the Illithid in its private refuge. The creature is known to employ a number of trustworthy and reliable agents throughout the planes to carry out its customers requests. No commission is too obscure or too dangerous for The Faithful Illithid.

Fear and Loathing

It's not necessarily wise to accept an invitation to a goblin night club. Then again, if you get an invitation like that, how can you not accept?

Chord Progression

Here's a dungeon I drew up for my wife, the performer and storyteller over lunch after one of her performances. I'm not very creatively inspired this morning, so maybe this will pick me up. It does make me think of the possibilities of dungeons as resonating chambers, sound-based magic, and climbing around inside a giant guitar. Come to think of it, I've been told that the design for Seattle's Experience Music Project was inspired by the interior construction of a guitar.

Archaic Torso

What's the Archaic Torso about? How the hell should I know? But when the Stravellings put it there, they didn't ask permission. They just plunked it down in the middle of Saint Acelot Square. And why is there a small but growing crowd of bedraggled worshippers hanging around it talking in strange tongues?

Dungeon Planet

10,000 worlds, suspended in a whirling gyrus like glass spheres caught in a Whirlpool

The exquisite observatory, counting away the obscure purpose of its construction

How big does a planet need to be to be considered a world, anyway?

A conscientious eye tyrant, enduring the scorn of his kind, focusing his prodigious intellect on banishing a persistent mystery

PS If there's one thing I love as much as dungeons, it's planets, and this one's both!

Lair of the Salamander

A primordial elemental of anger that once aroused will not be turned aside until it has consumed itself and all around it

A brilliant maker of artifacts, dabbling in dangerous techniques in his unstinting quest for perfection

A rare and valuable reagent gathered from a forbidden source

An grizzled veteran of many campaigns, her courage shaken by self-doubt

An enchanted arm band, containing a bound planar entity, capable of working powerful and disturbing transformations on the wearer

PS: And yeah, adventurers, just TRY to get across those lava pits to do whatever you need to do over there!

The Vampire's Den

An urbane abomination, clinging to the civilized accoutrements from a dimly-remembered life

A forgotten trinket that holds the secret to a family curse

A faithful servant, assiduous in his duties, yet twisted by a gnawing madness

A cozy den, a warm fire in the hearth, kept ever stocked with goods and comforts, concealing a deadly array of traps