Your players have just entered a little crumbling archway in a steepled hut sticking out of the ground, and descended a spiral staircase. You, the GM, know that they’ve just entered an ancient, submerged house of worship through the old bell tower. Right now, they’re standing on an old circular landing at the base of the tower. Time to find out what they do next.
What is a Dungeon?
It doesn't have to be a dark, dingy space deep beneath the ground. It might instead be part of a regular building, but packed with problems that the players need to think creatively in order to solve. Maybe it's a puzzle? Maybe it's a maze that goes on forever? Maybe it's the corrupted evil forces that want to kill the players. Maybe it's all three.
A dungeon should be a place to explore, and usually it comes with great rewards for the players who explore them.
The Dungeon Generator
In Tales from Myriad, the creation of dungeons for characters to explore is made simple and easy for the game master to plan. It can be daunting to create a dungeon, and so the game tries to help you find the best way forward.
The Dungeon Generator is a flow-chart designed for inspiring the framework of a dungeon. Roll for a door, then roll for the space beyond, then roll for an element inside. For each roll, the Dungeon Generator provides a list containing generalized options that are chosen by dice roll. The GM should customize each roll to the particularity of the Dungeon.
Using the Generator
The rules for Tales from Myriad come with some useful tips to help use the Generator.
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Plan Ahead: Make sure to think about the important parts of the dungeon before your players head in. This lets you plan for clues, stories and challenges.
- Use encounters, ambushes and traps sparingly.
- Think carefully about puzzles. Some players will solve them immediately, and others will take an age to get through them. Figure out what works for your players and their approach to puzzles.
- Use verticality and branching or looping pathways to encourage the players to explore
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Foreshadow! Players won't take risks if they don't have an idea of what might be waiting for them.
And many, many more hints and tips. But you'll need to look inside the book to find out.
Doors!
The eternal bane of an adventuring party! The generator can help you decide how tricky the door is going to be! Is it hidden, locked, trapped, barred, not even a door at all? Or maybe it's just an unlocked door!
You get through a door? Where does it take you? Is it a pathway? Or a new room?
Pathways
You get through the door, and your in a dimly lit pathway. What's here? The generator can help you decide if there are traps, encounters, a hidden thing or something else!
Rooms
The generator includes six different Room Types, and suggests things that your party might find in the room. You can this to your advantage, considering if the result is useful to your story plan and whether it's of interest to your players. If not? Roll again!
Not every Room Type is obvious given the environment, but they are all applicable given a bit of creative stretching. For example, “Kitchen/Food Place” suggests a place where creatures consume things. In an urban environment this is more obvious, but for a spider’s cave this may be where they store their webbed victims, or where soulless guards toss remains to their fetid dogs within a rotting fortress.
Filling Rooms with Stuff
The last part of the generator is considering what your players find in rooms. Is it a tall room, does it look over another lower floor, is there a crawl space?
If it has traps in, what type of traps? Are they physical traps in the floor, is it a magical trap that is harder to spot?
Are there other hidden things in the room? Are the hidden things people, or objects?
Ready to take it for a spin?
The Dungeon Generator is an incredibly useful to help game masters plan for their sessions, and help get some of the trickiest parts of planning for these classic settings out of your brain and into your planning.
To see the whole thing in action, why not pick yourself up a copy of Tales from Myriad on our site, either in physical print or as a digital copy.
https://metalweavegames.com/collections/tales-from-myriad
