Randomizing a Shadowdark Dungeon
I claim somewhere on this blog to be an adventure writer, but I don't have any adventures I've written on the blog. I've been running a lot of Shadowdark this year, and building an opinion of the system. So I've decided to kill two birds with one stone and write an adventure relying as much on the random tables provided by Shadowdark as possible for this month's Randomness Blogwagon.
Without further ado, here are the random results from 7 different tables (I rolled 2 NPCs).
Roll 1:
Adventure pg. 122 Banish the Noble of the Royal Knights
Roll 2:
Site Name pg. 123 Abbey of the Blighted Skull
Roll 3:
Rumors pg. 120-121
- An ancient, stone door has been found in the castle cellar
- The Dragon Ixamir has awoken from her 200 year slumber
Roll 4:
Something Happens! pg. 118-119 [^1]
- A man slips a note and an odd potion into your hand
- A frail beggar whispers he has a secret to tell you
Roll 5:
NPC 1 Cyrtossel Middle aged, Elf, Lawful, Extravagantly Wealthy Cleft chin, moves slowly, obsessed with fire [^2]
Roll 6:
NPC 2 Maron iisk Elderly, Dwarf, Lawful, Poor White hair, spits, has a false identity, carpenter
Roll 7:
Rival Crawlers The Lightless Scimitars, 3 members Known for finding a legendary sword, Fame: local Wealthy, suffering a curse Tactics: scout + sneak
Roll 8:
Tavern The Silver Axe Known for famous bard performances Wealthy: 4 drinks, Food: 2 standard + 2 wealthy
Initial thoughts:
- Cyrtossel the Elf is the villain of the adventure and the Noble of the Royal Knights. He's done something that will/did result in the dragon's waking.
- The ancient, stone door in the castle cellar leads to The Abbey of the Blighted Skull.
- Probably one of these "Something Happens!" results is the inciting event of the adventure? Maybe a hamfisted way to deliver clues to a group unsure of how to proceed.
- Not sure if I'll end up using The Lightless Scimitars, but if I do I imagine that their curse is what's keeping them in town and also providing their motivation to become involved. Probably The Lightless Scimitar itself is cursed and the group is all siblings which is why the other two haven't abandoned the cursed party.
The way the book instructs you to make a map very clever
Roll or choose a site size and type. Then, take the number of dice listed for the dungeon's size and roll them together on a blank sheet of standard paper.
Note the position where each die fell. Draw an outline around the dice to form the site's shape, separating the rooms with walls and passages that match the dungeon's type.
Note the number on each die to determine the type of room it is. Roll on the corresponding table for the room's contents.
The site's objective or boss monster is located in the room with the highest room type roll.
Finally, roll for the dungeon's overall danger level.
I decided where to put the entrance to the dungeon, numbered the rooms, cleaned up some of the spaces/connections, and noted door and trap placement. Unfortunately I didn't take a "before" picture.
After initial rolls from the various room type tables I had:
- Empty
- Empty
- Trap [Large, Toxic]
- Treasure - Protected by Hazard [Toxic gas or vapors]
- Solo Monster [Clever Spellcaster]
- Major Hazard [Long Fall]
- Empty
- Empty
- Solo Monster [Sneaky Pariah]
- Solo Monster [Mighty Pariah]
- Treasure - Protected by Trap [Ranged, Mechanical]
- Minor Hazard [Stuck or locked barrier]
For whatever reason the first thing I looked at was the Solo Monsters. I interpreted "Pariah" to mean non-social creatures so "Sneaky Pariah" was obviously a Black Pudding. I wanted to use a bear so the Mighty Pariah becomes a Mummified Brown Bear. Clever Spellcaster wasn't immediately obvious, but after paging through the monster section a Ghost jumped out as perfect, after all every dungeon needs Someone to talk to, even better if that someone is incredibly dangerous.
The toxic gas hazard in the large central room seemed perfect as it will have to be traversed multiple times and probably take more than a round to cross if the PCs are moving carefully. Easy enough to just say there are vents filling the room with heavy alkaline vapors: stinky, each round a creature ends its movement in the room save Con DC 12 or take 1d6 damage. It also gave me an idea for the [Large, Toxic] trap in room 3, a pressure plate that releases spores causing Anosmia (loss of smell) and minor Wis and Con damage, this will make the toxic vapors harder to deal with. Room 12 will get some bait that triggers a falling portcullis, trapping the PCs where they can be harmed by the vapors. Room 6's Major Hazard [Long Fall] is clearly a pit trap, and I love putting doors at the bottom of pits so that will be the only way to access Room 7.
Given that this is a secret royal religious site/tomb that includes a mummified bear I think that I'll lean into bear iconography and make the bear the symbol of the royal family. Taking a break for life stuff and to let things tumble around in my head for a while.
~ 10 days and 4 blog posts later: coming back to finish keying the dungeon and flesh out the framing of the adventure. I've rolled a bunch of random treasure to scatter throughout the dungeon. I made up the magic spear and have probably read some variation of the ring 10 times in various systems, supplements and blogs.
Ring of the Dryads, wooden ring carved with knot pattern, 1/day step into a tree and out through another of the same kind familiar to you within 10 miles. x Heavy iron key (1 sp) x Minotaur hoof with a gold horseshoe (50 gp) x Suit of dwarf-made chainmail, mithral (240 gp) x Dragonbone crossbow carved as roaring dragon (60 gp) Mithral shield inlaid with small, blue pearls (80 gp) x Heart-taker: Bear spear, blackened ash handle, pattern welded blade. +1 weapon, d8 dmg die, can't be thrown, can be set against a charge, if a hit is made against a charging opponent they stop just out of normal weapon reach. x Gold censer with hooded, skeletal figures (70 gp) x Chest containing 250 gp x
...
Finished mapping in dungeon scrawl, fleshed out most of the keys, this thing is almost done, it's time for bed. In fact if I stopped right here I bet most people could figure out how to run the damn thing no problem.
...
Anyway, here's the dungeon, I'm not sure what else to say at this point except I'm glad I'm done with this process. Catacomb of the Blighted Skull
Some "design notes":
- I briefly considered a longer timeframe between the old kings assassination and the upcoming tribute but having Marjorie be the first monarch of the new regime solved a bunch of issues, it was obvious really. The biggest issue is the amount of names and fact points that are going to be exposited. Depending on how many questions the PCs ask it's already going to be a lot.
- Similarly I was struggling with how to get the PCs into a position where they actually had the job and had met Maron IIsk in order to find the secret location of the Catacomb. It became pretty obvious that there wouldn't be an easy way to get the PCs there without railroading anyway and it would be a waste of time, so they just start the adventure already talking to the people that can tell them everything they need to know to get started.
- Speaking of the Catacomb, the way the adventure shaped up "Abbey of the Blighted Skull" didn't make any sense, so I changed it. That's how you're supposed to use random tables in this context, duh. I mean I guess I could have had a bunch of undead nuns guarding the skull...
- I'm just stealing the Iron Keep map from the 4E adventure Reavers of Harkenwold. It's a good (if flawed) adventure and the keep is perhaps my favorite part of it. Also fuck WotC, this is a blog post. If you want more details on rooms in the keep go find a "perfectly legal" way to access the adventure, that's what I did.
In case it wasn't obvious I didn't use AI to write this
Conclusions
Shadowdark has some very good tables and procedures for generating dungeons. The tables for Adventure design are much less detailed although simply starting with "Destroy the ... Ritual ... Of the fallen hero" with the site "Tomb ... Of the cursed ... Peak" with a couple NPCs is probably all the inspiration you need to construct a perfectly fine adventure. I wish more of the results were weird, this adventure/dungeon is pretty good I think, but very steeped in the vernacular fantasy of D&D. Aside from a few fun rooms I wouldn't say I've achieved much conceptual density here. Most of what I think is actually novel about this adventure came from my own imagination rather than the prompts, but that's really what I want random tables for, as prompts to germinate my own imagination. I can't help but think if some of the prompts strayed a bit from the vanilla dungeon fantasy silo something more interesting would have flowered, but "it's the poor craftsman who blames his tools".
There were a few major gaps in the "Shadowdark Maps" (of dungeons) section.
- No information on theming a dungeon beyond a table of "types" (e.g. tom, cavern, etc.)
- No "special" result on the room type table, not enough empty room results. I would make it a d12 table and change "Empty" to 1-3 and add "Special" in space 11.
- No tables to inspire the filling of empty rooms to reinforce dungeon theme or provide clues.
- Traps and Hazards make for good puzzles, but some more tables or advice for making "special" rooms or just putting toys to play with in rooms.
I quite like Shadowdark's treasure tables although I didn't roll any magic items so I decided to insert some myself. I find the magic items in the book to generally be too powerful and universally applicable, I really like having lots of items with very narrow use cases. I do really like Shadowdark's advice on designing magic items, and the potions tables are good. Last quibble, I would have liked a few more results of boring old coins on the treasure tables, but it was simple enough to add some bags of antique silver pieces myself.
[^1] This felt like the least useful table to me. The results varied between too generic to inspire in prep and too specific to be useful in the moment. I don't know when I'd want a table containing both the results "A pair of yellow eyes watches you from the darkness" and "A dwarf in a red hat hands you a rose, bows, and leaves". Perhaps if I were running a picaresque style game where every adventure begins in media res without regard to how the last one ended.
[^2] This is the only result I fudged. I had rolled "2: Adores with baby animals". Knowing that this character was the villain and a dragon might be involved I opted to move down one result to "3: Obsessed with Fire".