Stocking a Dungeon
Header Art: Dungeon Master’s Guide (2008) by Wizards of the Coast
Figuring out how to creature and flesh out a dungeon can be difficult. You want to make sure you have rooms that make sense in the dungeon, but how realistic do you need to go? Will it make sense that the inhabitants are in a ruined building underground? What exactly are you supposed to do in a dungeon anyway?
Dungeons
Dungeons make excellent points of adventuring and are especially good at giving you a reason to have multiple encounters in a single day. A dungeon can take on any form, from an ancient, hollowed-out tree to a vast underground tunnel structure filled with eldritch beings. Dungeons can even take place above-ground and be spread throughout a city. The sky is the limit when you create a dungeon and don’t feel constrained by what your dungeon looks like or where it might be.
With that said, what happens once you figure out where you want your dungeon? What do you populate within your dungeon?
Dungeon Master’s Guide, 2014 WotC
Rooms
A major component of a dungeon are the different rooms that one could find there. Not every dungeon needs every room listed below, but by mixing and matching the ones below, you can have a rich dungeon with a variety of multi-purpose rooms to give you a variety of options just in case your party TPKs and they wake up in the prison.
Rooms also allow you to explain the history of the dungeon to your players, without shoveling exposition on them. Is there an ancient temple to a dead god? All of a sudden, that area could be a valuable safe location to the party, plus if something about it catches their fancy, you get a chance to have them interact with your history, and maybe bring back a dead god.
Each room of the dungeon tells a story, as well as where they are positioned. Are the kitchens adjacent to the prison? Well, that means that they eat their prisoners often. Is the throne room next to a library? Sounds like the ruler is a big nerd. Are the barracks close to the front doors or are they far back? Each place for the barrack is a narrative decision, either the ruler is paranoid they are going to be attacked, or the ruler doesn’t want a bunch of guards messing with their expensive carpets and exquisitely carved decorations.
Armory Not only a place to store weapons, but also a location where weapons and armor are crafted.
Bedchambers Monsters have to sleep somewhere, and while a barracks is a good place as any for large numbers, the leader and upper ranks of the monsters will want their own quarters.
Gardens A place for growing all manner of crops, some of them may even be dangerous, or a place for great beauty and to give the wealthy within the dungeon a chance to escape to nature and enjoy peace and beauty.
Guard Rooms Guards are stationed at key locations throughout the dungeon, not necessarily to kill any intruders but to slow them down, alert their superiors, and set up any traps. These rooms may be filled with refuse and uneven terrain, making it difficult for adventurers to rush forward while the guards shoot missiles and magic at their slow approach.
Kitchens Do the monsters prepare their food before consuming it? Then they likely have a kitchen that is constantly in motion.
Nursery A central room for holding all the young monsters in the dungeon, allowing them to protect the young easily. Nurseries may be well guarded, to protect their young, or not guarded at all if the monster’s culture believes that only the strong will survive.
Prison Hordes need places to put people, whether they are planning to eat them or not. This prison could be filled with backup characters (in case one were to fall), NPCs to add some role-playing into your slashfest, as well as monsters who got on the wrong side of the boss and are willing to negotiate their release for the information they have to would-be heroes.
Private Study The ruler of the dungeon always needs somewhere to go to unwind, relax, and focus on their plans for world domination. In this room, all sorts of secrets can be uncovered, like how they are planning on donating a thousand books to the needy and burning down an orphanage.
Refuse With a place to put trash, garbage, the bones of their fallen meals, and more, this location is a gold mine for an Otyugh. This location can even hold broken weapons, equipment, and more, giving information to the party about what they might face (and be an easy way to sneak in).
Secret Room Perhaps this location has yet to be discovered by the dungeon’s current inhabitants. There are secrets locked away in here of the previous inhabitants of the dungeon, and what happened to them.
Storeroom/Storage This location stores dry goods, materials, and anything else the dungeon needs a lot of, like tools to repair crumbling infrastructure. Depending on what the monsters eat, this could also double as a prison.
Temple Do the denizens of the dungeon worship here? Or is this an old temple that has been abandoned, destroyed, or blocked off from the rest of the dungeon?
Throne Room A place of high honor where crowds can hear the words of their ruler and provides a central place of governance within the dungeon.
Trophy Room Who doesn’t like to show off their various kills?
Water Fountain/Supply A dungeon needs water, no matter its occupants (unless they are all fire elementals). Water must come from somewhere, maybe a spring in the center or a river that flows underground.
Traps
Dungeon Master’s Guide, 2014 WotC
Traps can be placed throughout the dungeon, though be sensical. It wouldn’t make sense to put a trap on a throne that is often sat in by the ruler, but it would make sense to create a false throne and put a trap on that. Traps are designed to kill and maim, to slow down and push out, any and all intruders.
Unfortunately, traps can’t tell friends from foes and so traps can’t be placed in places of high traffic for fear of someone messing up and stepping on the wrong tile, forgetting to jump a tripwire, or similar. Traps are placed in strategic places where guards know about them and can ensure they are set off or armed for when the heroes come.
For more information on traps and how to design them, check out Designing Traps.
Interesting Rooms
Another important part of dungeon design is not just filling a dungeon with rooms, but making the rooms interesting. Rooms serve the purpose of not just being where an encounter takes place, but also serve to further the narrative, provide problems to the party, and give the monsters of the dungeon home-field advantage.
Rooms should be large enough for monsters and the party to move about, giving them more than a 4x4 room with a single monster that three people can stand around. While that might be realistic that a bedroom is only that size, it isn’t fun or interesting. Instead, that same room should be large enough that a monster can move closer or further from the party, that the party has to negotiate over fallen dressers and give your players a reason to remember the room. This might mean it is difficult terrain, thus slowing down the party as they try to reach the spellcaster, or try to catch the guard who is now running to alert the rest of the dungeon to the party’s presence.
Dungeon Master’s Guide, 2014 WotC
If your dungeon is populated by ogres, giants, and other large creatures, ensure they have ways to negotiate the hallways and doors. Most giants are huge, and thus can’t even squeeze down 5-foot hallways or regular doors, so you’ll need massive hallways and doors for them… which also helps build the atmosphere of the dungeon! If everything is sized for a giant, that means the party has to come up with plans to open doors (no longer a free object interaction) and even have to navigate the stairs, which can be quite the hassle during pitched combat when the giants can chuck rocks or move up and down the stairs easily, while the party has spend double or even triple their movement to even move up to the next stair.
In regards to rooms, remember that rooms shouldn’t be the same from segment to segment. It’s ok if they have the same general look, cobblestone floors, tunnels hewn from solid stone, but there should be more to separate each room. Sameness throughout each room just feels like a slog that the party has to cut through to get to the real dungeon and real monsters they want to face.
The last thing to remember is that this is a fantasy game focused on the fantastical and weird. Your rooms don’t have to be ultra-realistic, they can incorporate oddities like oversized mushrooms, water somehow flowing into the floor, and more. Fill rooms with illusions of grandeur, since the monsters are too poor to afford real statues and portraits, and allow the fantastical to draw your players into a dungeon. You don’t have to describe how there are exactly 10 outhouses to properly dispose of the waste of 50 guards. That isn’t interesting by itself unless you make it an important part of your dungeon.
Intra-Dungeon Interactions
Volo’s Guide to Monsters, 2016 WotC
Throughout the dungeon, you can break up the slogfest of fights by providing interesting interactions, choices, and consequences throughout the dungeon. Just because the main rulers of the dungeon are kobolds, doesn’t mean that goblins, orcs, oozes, and other creatures aren’t trying to take over the dungeon for their purposes. In fact, the kobolds could have a tenuous agreement with some other sapient dungeon dweller, allowing them a certain area of the dungeon so long as they don’t attack the kobolds. These interactions are ripe for the players to come in and disrupt, allowing your dungeon to feel alive and letting the players feel as if their actions have an impact on the world and the dungeon.
A dungeon doesn’t have to be stocked with just the same creature, and in fact, it shouldn’t be. It’ll be a boring dungeon dive if the only thing they fight are kobolds, with each room just having different numbers of kobolds that all do the same thing, over and over. Instead, give the kobolds giant lizard allies that they ride into combat, give them drakes that help guard the passages, or have them set up an agreement with an umber hulk to kill invaders. These allies give your players a chance to break up the monotony of fighting the same monster over and over and allows them to use specific spells, abilities, and powers that may not work on kobolds, or whatever dungeon inhabitant you have, allowing them to feel useful and that you aren’t just nerfing them and their power choices in the dungeon.
Not every dungeon is in perfect harmony with itself, and this is something that players can utilize to their benefit. If they know they have to kill the dragon at the end of the dungeon, but they are running low on resources, maybe they can make a deal with the local goblins to let them rest in their half of the dungeon, in exchange, they will also kill the kobold captain in a different section of the dungeon so that the goblins can take over the entire dungeon for their mischief. Then again, maybe the goblins and kobolds are real close, at which point, the party can try and push the goblins against the kobolds, coming up with lies to have the goblins wage war against the kobolds, making it an easier dungeon dive for them in just a few short hours while they rest, but requiring difficult skill checks by the party.
Create rivals throughout the dungeon, they can even be of the same race as the one who rules the dungeon. There are plenty of plotting and evil-mustache twirling villains that would love to see the removal of the current ruler, and their rump on the throne. This backstabbing can allow the party to find a secret door they might’ve missed, bypass numerous encounters of fighting the same kobold over and over, or give them valuable information like they need to destroy the ruler’s crown to depower the ruler in the final fight. It also gives you valuable role-play that can liven up a dungeon and allow you to share more of the world you created with the players.
Dungeon Master’s Guide, 2014 WotC
Finishing Your Dungeon
Dungeons are complex ecosystems filled with monsters each making deals with each other to keep their corner of the dungeon to themselves. By thinking about the factions, rooms, and style of the dungeon you are creating, you can create a believable dungeon that is not just fun but expands on the history and narrative of your story. By giving your dungeon unique traps, rooms, and terrain, you can bring exciting combats into a dungeon crawl, making your players excited for the next dungeon crawl and adventure!
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