Sample Dungeon - Design

I made a (an unfinished) dungeon.

This is by no means a finished product. It is an example. And this is a lesson about what you need, and what you don't!

First, scale. What is the scale? Scale means how big it is. I don't have a grid, and that's fine. In its absences, we can say the smaller rooms are about 30 ft x 20 ft and the bigger rooms are about 60 ft x 40 ft. Don't like those dimensions? Change them. Precision is extraneous. Keep it simple. This is economic prep and GMing.

Second, cardinal directions. I have no compass rose. Which way is north? You're the GM. You pick.

Third, what's the name and story of this dungeon (the context)? Call it a fill in the blank dungeon. It looks like a cave network right. Or maybe it's an old mine. Doesn't need to be special. Write a short list of three to five things about it. Who, what, when, where, why, how. It's your setting - you know best.

Context

Now that the obvious questions about the map are answered, and I assume not everyone is happy, we can talk about why scale, markings, and deep lore aren't important. Ahem. Your players don't care. OK, they might care. Nerds. The context, why they're here and why this place is or was important, is helpful. Let's brainstorm three explanations.

1. This is an old coal mine. Because of the plague, all the minors got sick and many died. While it was vacant and inactive, monsters moved in and now they're interfering with the mine restarting.
2. A small, private silver mine. The deed holder died of old age, and the heirs are fighting over how to split it. One of them wants to hire diggers and continue to operate it, one of them wants to sell it to a noble and earn some favor. A gang of bandits have arrived to sabotage it for one of the parties.
3. This iron mine operated during the war, was stripped of all the iron deposits, and has been boarded up to prevent outlaws and wild animals from moving in. Someone dangerous opened it up and is hiding out.

Nothing special, right. Simple, one to two sentence backgrounds. There's room for you to improv, speculate, extrapolate, and embellish on, but there's not an overwhelming amount of information for you to learn. It's not limiting, restrictive or cumbersome.

Design

This is where I tell you what makes a good dungeon, obviously.

Room key

The rooms are keyed, but keys are always flexible and subject to change. Note how simple they are. It does not need to be paragraphs. Don't have read aloud text. Use bullet points and keep it to a small list of essentials. Monsters and their stats should be one line. Treasure should be one line.

Exploration

Exploration means that there are choices to make and things to discover or miss. The fun of exploration is discovery, so learn from Starfield by Bethesda and put monsters, traps, hazards, and treasure, and notice that there are optional paths! In fact, there is an optional entrance that plops the PCs in room 8a near room 11 where the 5-room dungeon begins.

5-Room Dungeon

Believe it or not, rooms 11 through 15 are a 5-room dungeon. You've heard about these right? Each room resembles a significant beat in three-act story structure. There's an intro, a minor obstacle, a major obstacle, a climax, and a reward. It's not perfect, whatever. The point is that it's in the back of the dungeon. This means you have a structured, linear ending after a dungeon with choices.

Multiple Entrances 

The dungeon has two entrances (room 1 and 8a). The reason being is because this means that the PCs have something to discover, and they have a choice about how to access the dungeon. Room 1 is the main entrance, but room 8a goes up. Maybe it was a natural opening that was used an old emergency exit or, maybe above it they build a separate structure and used it for worker housing or for a depo. There are multiple factions in this dungeon, and each gets their own entrance.

Annotated Maps

The edges of this drawing are filled in and the rooms are small. Were I to use the entire piece of paper, I would put notes and symbols all over the map. Anything to simplify the map and make it more intuitive is helpful.

Loops

I've got loops in my map. Loops make it interesting and each loop can be treated as its own zone.

Volume

15 to 24 rooms sounds like a perfectly good size dungeon to me. I have rooms numbered 1 to 15, plus 8a.

Flow Charts

Maps are overrated. Flow charts are simpler. Use a flow chart like this one instead. It's the same as the map above. The shapes of the rooms are all pretty square, but their shapes here are not intended to be literal. 

Map Key

1. Main Entrance. The entrance to the mind shaft has a sign bearing the name of the mine and the notifies trespassers "private property". Roll a 1d6; There is a 1-2 chance of encountering 1d6 bandits on watch for potential trespassers.

2. Rubble path. Recently collapsed, but narrow paths have been haphazardly cleared by its new temporary occupants.

3. Mine and pit. The outer perimeter ramps down into a pit in the center. This is where most of the mining was done.

4. Tool storage. Only old, worn, damaged tools left.

5. Bandit leader's room. His treasure is hidden here in a locked box. A bound prisoner is kept here.

6. Bandit's common room / barracks. They are occupying the mine. Bedrolls, food and drinks, and some possessions are stored here. They keep one watch dog here to protect against traffic coming from the direction of room 7 and beyond.

7. Empty room. 

8. Trap - The trip wire spans the hall, and goes up to a concealed bottle of alchemist fire and is suspended from the ceiling. If kicked or stepped on, the bottle is yanked and falls to the ground. Poof!

8a. Broken Ladder 15 ft up and out of dungeon through a hole among tall grass! It is prone to break under the weight of a human-sized creature (roll 1-2 on a d6). Two people on the ladder at the same time means the ladder automatically breaks. Anyone who falls, or who has someone fall on them, takes 1d6 damage.

9. Seemingly empty. Stash of silver ore hidden by one of the bandits.

10. Three large watchdogs are placed here by bandits who occupy rooms 5 + 6. They are roped in place to a stake in the ground, but each has 50 ft of slack.

11. Stick topped with severed human head. Goblin foot tracks below. Improv ropes has been made from strips of cloth (old shirts) and suspended from the ceiling like a curtain. Bones have been tied in them. They clatter when you pass through them. This is an alarm.

12. Goblin guard post. 1-3 goblins are on watch at any time.

13. Goblin barracks. 4 to 6 goblins, either resting or rough housing.

14. Goblin common room (12 to 18 goblins resting)

15. Goblin chief's room + his 3 goblin concubines and their treasure hoard - a pile of two-hundred forty (240) impure silver nuggets worth about 24 gp.

Wandering Encounters

Yes, you need these. They make your dungeon feel like a living, believable place, and they encourage PCs to treat the dungeon that way. Each round of exploration or movement, roll a 1d6. On a roll of a 1, roll for an encounter based on the room (see below). If you roll an encounter, place it logically. The NPCs do not simply appear without logic. They are either in the room before the PCs arrived, or they are approaching this room from another room.

The NPCs are aware that they share the dungeon with another faction, but they are relatively familiar with their presence, and they tentatively respect each other's boundaries. They are suspicious and untrusting of the other faction, thought they don't tend to engage in violence or theft. Therefore, both factions are generally cautious when wandering the dungeon. If the PCs have not encountered the NPCs, then the NPCs are cautious but not alert; otherwise, the NPCs are cautious of possible intruders and are actively keeping an eye out for them. 

• Rooms 1-6, and 10, encounter 1d6 wandering bandits. They are either on their way to mine, or they're checking on the dogs, or they're going to relieve guards at room 1, or they're preparing to leave the mine to commit various crimes on the road or in town.
• Rooms 11-15, encounter 1d6 goblins.
• Rooms 7-9, you may encounter either 1d6 bandits (1-3 chance) or 1d6 goblins (4-6 chance). The goblins use room 8a to leave the dungeon to raid farms for livestock, pets, or small children.

Annotated Map (Flow Chart)

You can add more notes, but I got lazy. The contents of the room could be added. This is the apex of the dungeon map. Honestly, I don't know why maps aren't done more like this.

Managing Expectations in TTRPGs - Discussing What We Do and Don't Like

When it comes to TTRPGs like D&D and Pathfinder (pronounced pat-h-fin-der), I think the trickiest part is managing expectations. That is to say that I have had a lot of personal experience with trying to run one kind of game, and players trying to play another kind of game, or vice versa if I'm a player. For me, it's very unsatisfying to tell players, "I'm running a game for heroic characters", and someone still brings a joke character, and someone else still brings a character of neutral alignment and needs some extra motivation to do anything. Ugh.

This article is my attempt to work out a way to manage these expectations. The first thing is to identify the motives, experiences, interests and influences of the participants. Some people's only exposure to fantasy might be Adventure Time. You might think I'm making that up, but I'm not! I have played with that guy. He didn't know any of the classic fantasy conventions and he played like it.

We're going to start with some useful vocabulary. Ask and discuss these questions:

• Influences or Interests: What movies, books, comics, video games, tv, etc. have you seen? that you like? What do you like about them?
• Disinterests: What do you dislike about TTRPGs, genres, literary conventions, etc. Some people are open to anything, some people aren't! For people with discerning tastes, this is as important.
• Experiences: Previous experiences with TTRPG(s). What did you like about them, what did you not like? Players may have learned some things that you would like them to unlearn.
• Motives: Why are you interested in TTRPGs? What about this hobby is fun for you? What makes you want to play a TTRPG?

My Interests: My favorite work of Fantasy might just be Kentaro Miura's Berserk. Let's discuss why. The art is badass. The dark themes are interesting. The scenarios are interesting. There's a sort of cosmic horror to it. Guts is just this regular guy who manages to become above average by sheer effort and a will to survive. He has an extraordinary tenacity for survival in the face of overwhelming odds. His opponents are often otherworldly and nightmarish in power and scale but they have such simple motives like eating people or avoiding boredom. He even earns their respect with his will and fortitude. What else? It's otherwise a low-magic, earth-like setting. The horror elements almost replace the fantastic elements, and I think that's really cool!

I also like Vampire Hunter D for some similar reasons, and because I think it's stylish as hell. In this setting, Vampires became the rulers of the earth. To the extent that the word noble became synonymous with vampire and few people use the word vampire. Humans are cattle. That's pretty dark. The titular character is D, and he's a Dhampir. That means he is a half human half vampire. Because of this, he's rejected by both humans and vampires. He's also secretly the most badass character in the setting. The question is what does he want and why? It seems to me that the author intends to leave these things up to interpretation or inference, but we are to come away believing that this is not a character with ordinary motivations.

Tim Burton's Sleepy Hallow was pretty fucking stylish too. In this movie, everyone's dressed in a period era outfit, there's only one monster and he's an absolute badass, no one understands the monster or magic, and the fantastic elements are not casually accepted by anyone. They're all as wild as if you went out for a walk and met an extra-terrestrial.

Generally, low fantasy settings or earth-like settings where the supernatural or extraordinary are rare and maybe even intrusive upon the ordinary world are interesting. Monsters are monsters! Magic is dangerous or even forbidden. The elements of the fantasy that make fantasy unique are kept low so that they when they are used, they have a greater effect, like a guy who never says curse words finally dropping an f-bomb. I also like the low fantasy, dark fantasy Campaign Diaries of Professor DM on the Dungeon Craft YouTube channel!

Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean is cool for similar reasons. The fantastic elements are presented as curses, and they present the supernatural as dangerous and mysterious. If you had to assign all the characters in that movie a D&D class, they would either be fighters or thieves (rogues). 

My Disinterests: You might think I don't actually like fantasy, and there might be something to that, but I don't like pure horror and I'm not into the horror TTRPGs because in those you play as a survivor or a victim. I do want to be a hero. Fantasy can be pretty @#$%^ nerdy. The way nerds use wizards, vampires, demons, and lycanthropes can be really cringy because they make it mundane and ordinary. Monsters aren't monsters anymore, they're just like cat people or something. And then there's people who think it's racist to kill monsters and take their stuff, and those people are just detrimental to the hobby. I don't like elves, dwarves, hobbits, and some of the other fantastic races that have become standard like Tieflings, half-orcs, and dragonborn (dragon people). These things make me feel like I'm watching the Muppets. I don't like that magic is common and ordinary, like a skill or an art that people can just pick up and learn. What's so special about magic if everyone can do it?

My Experiences: I have mostly played 5e D&D. It's pretty lame. There's furries. There's scalies. Goblins, bugbears, and other monsters are humanoids or goblinoids, and so they're treated like an exotic people. I don't like that. Demons from the Christian hell are not people. Even goblins should be monstrous. D&D makes me feel like I'm Eddie Valiant in Who Framed Roger Rabit. Tonally, it's lame. Players play these goofy characters, or they make characters who are kind of goofy conceptually but are intended to be played serious. It makes it difficult for me to care. I don't care about non-humans, and I don't care to humanize the non-humans. I'm hoping for something more serious, but this can't help but feel cartoonish. Besides that, the player characters get pretty powerful, and after a while they play like they know they are. Powerful player characters are antithetical to horror. I have played mostly in Faerun and Eberron, and slightly in Draconlance, Spelljammer, the Underdark, and Greyhawk; but I think 5e modernized it all made it all lame. It's casual and accessible and safe. Even the modern Ravenloft setting is kind of watered down and plebian. I also hate chaotic and evil player characters! They're dicks and they spoil someone's fun. I want PCs who can play as a damn team. And I don't want to be a villainous character, and I don't want to be a character who would particularly tolerate villainous companions or allies. But when you play D&D, this game permits evil and chaotic player characters, and so do most GMs, so I have to put up with it.

Motives: I have lost interest in tv, movies, comics, anime, and books because I think it used to be good, now it's not; but I still want to indulge in some narrative entertainment. I want an outlet for creativity, I want to socialize, and I want to play a game!

I think this was a particularly interesting exercise and I recommend you all do the same.

Here's what I learned about myself: I am not down for any game.

I want an earth-like or low fantasy, human-centric setting where magic and monsters are rare and dangerous. The line between fantasy and horror is blurred. Monsters are not people, they are monsters, and they are opposed to humanity. Magic-users are rare, maybe even feared and hated. Stakes are low, not epic. Characters are generally relatable; scenarios are generally plausible; environments are generally realistic. Your character is an ordinary or above average person. You are not great, but you can earn greatness. You have a chance to become a hero, and I want you to aspire to be, but if you become a villain, I take your PC and make them an NPC in my setting, and they become the property of the me, the GM. Don't do anything you wouldn't do in real life. Play your character like you care what happens to them. This is low, dark fantasy.

Why TTRPG Combat Feels Slow (How to Fix!)

The reason why your TTRPG combat feels slow is because I'm waiting for my curse word turn!

Playing TTRPG combat is like watching a documentary about one action scene from an action movie. It takes one hour or more to show a 1-minute fight scene, and it chops up that action scene and scatters its pieces throughout the documentary. If you are watching the documentary just to see the action scene, it's going to feel like you're doing fifty-nine minutes of waiting.

To solve this, first you need a game system with rules that allow for short turns with faster action resolution. If turns are short, that means less waiting for your turn. Pathfinder 2e for example gives players the option to do up to three things on your turn. Three actions on a turn means longer turns and more waiting. D&D 5e is a game where I hear the Dungeon Master asking the players "is that it for your turn?" a lot because it's not clear in 5e when someone's turn is done (absolutely a flaw, not a feature!). Worse yet, this question often prompts the player to stop and think about what else they can do (aw crap, you still have bonus actions!). Any game rule that lets the GM or the Player spend a reaction or similar action to interrupt (or disrupt) the flow of turn order is a momentum killer and should be purged from the game!

Second, you need to cut down on the "documentary" parts of your game. The documentary parts are the parts of a TTRPG where players count squares, ask for rules clarification, ask what they see, hear, etc., ask about lore, ask "would my character know this?", request do-overs or retcons, suggest or discuss strategy, ask for a recap because they weren't paying attention, aren't ready on their turn because they were on their phone or making side conversation, and so on. All of these things are examples of either breaking character or being a bad player. Breaking character absolutely leads to slowing the game down. To solve the second problem, implement a no breaking character rule. Implement other rules and incentives to pay attention and be ready on their turn. Courtesy unfortunately sometimes needs to be enforced by the GM. 

Third fix: Everyone (yes, players too!) needs to narrate their movement and actions better. Where are you at the start of your turn, how do you move, where do you end up. What are you doing, how are you doing it, what is your intended outcome or effect? Use natural language instead of game terminology. For example, don't say "I do a sneak attack to monster A", instead say "I sneak up to monster A and stab them in the back with my short sword". It's not for the sake of having pretty sounding game descriptions. There's a function to it. Game terminology is abstract, and so it feels abstract. It's vague. It's hard to visualize and remember. Natural language is clear and describes something in a precise, literal way we can visualize and remember. This will save us from asking for clarification about what you're doing in the moment, and it will save us from any discussion after the fact about what you stated and what your left out of your action. You didn't say you jumped over the puddle of acid, and you didn't say you ran around it, so you ran through it. I know your character isn't ordinarily stupid enough to make that mistake, but for some reason he did. No do-overs or retcons because this slows the game down. Next time, pay more attention to the scene and describe your action better.

Revision 4/19/2026: Here's another observation. Substance. What is the substance of a scene or a session to you? Do you like cool minis and terrain and music? That to me means that you find satisfaction in things that appeal to sensation and aesthetics. Do you like hitting monsters and using your various skills and powers to beat opponents in a contest? That to me means you find satisfaction in things that appeal to challenge and system mastery. What I like about a game is the narrative. That means I want to know what happens next. What happens next is the substance that I have been waiting for this week, and then you say "roll initiative." That is very unsatisfying for me because combat is the slowest way to find out what happens next. I have waited all week to find out what happens next only to spend an entire 4-hour session in one combat encounter. As an aside, that is one reason why I hate D&D 5e.  When you get a bunch of people together and you run this slow, clunky game that takes 30 to 40 mins (I have played in even slower games) to get through a round of combat because it's so complex, ugh. It makes me go ugh. Finding out who wins a skirmish is not that interesting. Go ahead and TPK us so we can start a new campaign and maybe even a different game.

Managing Expectations in TTRPGs

Every time I've ever ran a TTRPG or been invited to play TTRPG, I have been disappointed by something, and I've dropped out of a few groups when it was bad enough. Managing expectations was a concern of mine from the very beginning. I think I've found the vocabulary that I need to describe concepts that GMs can and should use when inviting players to their game. These five items below should help you no matter what kind of game you're running. Explain these ideas to your players as early as possible.

1. Fiction Doesn't Mean Anything Goes

Have you ever told someone that their idea didn't make sense, and their response was something like "but it's [fiction / fantasy / sci-fi]" and the implications was that because something (the game) is fiction, anything should be permissible? Here's the counter argument. Just because something is [fiction / fantasy / sci-fi], that doesn't mean anything goes. Fantasy is fiction with fantastic stuff. In fiction, the limitations of the fantastic elements are established, and then the rest of the setting is assumed to be based in realism which we can all relate to. Note that realism here is not the same as trying to create a game or setting that simulates what is realistic. Note that the core rules do not say "disregard realism" or "default to realism", this is a ruling made by the GM; however, defaulting to realism as a rule of thumb is useful because it gives us a common understanding of how the world works where the rules of the game do not cover, and common understanding allows the GM to be fair and consistent in their rulings and helps the players to understand the limitations of what they can do and cannot do. This also has the benefit of simplifying the game.

2. Forget Everything You Know About X

Tell your players to forget everything they know about fantasy, sci-fi, horror, 5e, Faerun, Eberron, World of Warcraft, etc. Do not let them bring their knowledge or expectations about goblins or vampires or were-creatures or magic to your game. Tell them that in your setting, these things might work differently, and that by relying on their knowledge of other settings or pop culture can spoil the experience of your game for themselves. Tell them you expect them to figure things out through exploration, social interaction, and experience in play. Alternatively, this common knowledge can give us a starting point to understand a setting, and so you would want to provide them with a list of other fiction that has inspired your game like D&D's famous Appendix N. I personally do not like Tolkien's interpretation on elves, dwarves, and hobbits (halflings). 

3. Generic Setting vs Curated Setting

Tell your players that the GM is the curator of the setting. As curator, you decide what is appropriate for the setting and what is not. Tell your players whether you are running a generic fantasy setting that is a hodgepodge of fantasy's most popular ideas intended for mass appeal, or if you are running a game in a curated setting with select fantasy ideas intended for a niche audience. Even a kitchen sink setting can have a few restrictions for the sake of keeping the game simple to prep and run for the GM, and to create a more focused or cohesive experience for the players.

4. Don't Ruin the Mood

People go to see movies for the kind of movie it promises to be. An action movie that's just sad and doesn't have very much action would be disappointing. Now imagine going to see a horror move that has 15 minutes of good, uninterrupted comedy that breaks all the tension. Imagine going to comedy that has 15 minutes of uninterrupted violence and gore that leaves you feeling too disgusted to enjoy the rest of the humor. Some people think a TTRPG has room for everything, but for me, these are examples of ruining the mood. Tell your players to be considerate of the mood of a scene or situation, especially when the focus is on another player character. Tell your players the kind of mood or overall tone you want for your game. Do you want a game with a more serious tone like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars, or do you want a game with a whacky fun tone like a Marvels movie or even some cartoon. Tell your players to make a character who suits the tone of the game.

5. Compatible Playstyles

This is a response to the famous excuse "I'm just playing my character TM". Every player plays differently. Your playstyle describes more than what your fantastic race / background / class is, but also how you play it. Define how you want your players to play the game from the beginning. I want the players to have cooperative playstyles, but I find too often that there are players who have made characters who not cooperative. They make crazy, loner, mischievous, selfish, greedy, or violent characters. The intent may be innocent, but the effect is that their playstyle is incompatible with others' if not antagonistic. They inevitably complicate or ruin a scene or goal for another player and spoil the fun for them. The offending player provides the famous excuse TM, and they avoid taking responsibility or making changes to their playstyle. Don't give your players the opportunity to even make that character. At character creation, tell your players they need to make a character who can work as part of a team and play collaboratively. Suggest that the players all make characters who are morally compatible or who share the same beliefs, values, or goals.

There you go. These five rules should stop your players from making that chaotic neutral cyborg ninja turtle-kin from the future who multiclassed into batman and power rangers and who worships the god of math and speaks in the third person using a Jersey accent and he loves eating mustard by itself. As a bonus sixth tip, tell your players they need to make a likable character, and that is a concept itself that will have to be defined, but most importantly it means don't make an asshole or a dick.