CONTEXT & GOALS
I have a slight fascination with understanding how much creative mileage one can get out of the Basic D&D and a couple of sheets of graph paper. I hold this idea that a DM of minimal experience should be able to hammer out a dungeon with the creative energy of Monday bored-in-class and have a good time running it Friday night. But I might be putting too much faith in random stocking and shooting-from-the-hip ideas. There is a reason both Moldvey and the Designing Dungeons Course councils are brainstorming key items, monsters, and locations as anchors when building a dungeon. Those central idea provide thematic & aesthetic guidance for the dungeon.
So to test, I grabbed a Dyson map, the Dolmenwood campaign for flavor, and started stocking with an eye toward speed-to-play, not quality-for-publication. I also took each set of rooms, six at a time, to hopefully create unified micro-areas.
But what would be interesting would be to blog an editing pass at this dungeon. What works and doesn't? What happens when you lean on a random stocking? And what are 3 things I can do to improve each section without a full re-write? I don't think I've seen this done before. And I want your comments below too!
CRYPT of the MERMAID'S ANCHOR (Pg 3)
Link to the Draft Document: Six Doors of the Forgotten Lord
Key Detail: Room 01 is a key dungeon entrance, so I rolled a on the heraldry table and got a mermaid motif- sea theme it is!
Inital Treasure Total: 900gp, no magic items
Initial Problems:
Too Hostile: The six rooms have a total of 9 hostile skeletons, which feels too intense for 1st-level characters right in the first set of rooms. It promotes as sorta look-and-leave stance with little exploration. We want to draw players in.
Boring Treasure: The secret door is not too hard to find, and yields a helpful MU NPC, but not really an exciting treasure. They discovered a secret, so let’s get the fantastical rolling
Door to Nowhere: There is also a frozen fountain, 3 skeletons trapped in the ice, and a visible staircase which leads to a “level 2”- however, I don’t have that planned.
Edits to Punch It Up:
Unexpected Hostilities: How about behind the north door are zombie mermaids that spit freezing salt water? The skeletons around the frozen fountain will be inert, but those in the west coffins will only attack if the south door is kicked in. Honestly, maybe we should have more zombie mermaids in lieu of skeletons, which were rolled on the random encounter table
Thematic Treasure: Okay, so they fight off 4-6 enemies, so let's give something cool. I made a list of treasures that is under 600 gp- on of these is a wizard pipe. This wizard accidentally fell asleep so maybe a spilled bag of sleeping sand (as sleep; 1 dose left). And since we have a sorta pirate theme, how about a treasure map- which is not often seen any modern modules. Because these treasures aesthetically match other elements in this area, I think players will be triggered to spin off conclusions about how the items all connect. Maybe those musings can be DM fodder.
One-Way Portal Fountain: Hmm, since I don’t have a 2nd level here, perhaps we can turn this into a one-way portal. One-way doors were also a feature of older dungeons, but I don’t see often now. So let’s pick an interesting place that maybe has a mirror or have them just fall through the ceiling somewhere else. Or maybe a ship moored somewhere else- a micro-dungeon?
Final Thoughts
Undead mermaids are just plain more exciting. A one-way portal feels "WTF!" from the player side, but surprising. But the treasure needs better work. I still like the idea of releasing a PC who becomes a part of the base town.