The Random Dungeon Expedition!

[SHARK]

Greetings!

Well, I have one group of friends that are pretty combat-focused, booty-hungry players.

On occasion, I have designed a huge series of dungeons--caverns, hallways, rooms, floorplans, and so on.

Along with these interchangeable dungeons, I have designed and statted up a whole roster of encounters, including treasure, tactics, spells, and so on.

Then, roll the dice, and let the fun begin!!!

It's always an interesting and fun time. As the DM, *I* don't even know what is in the next room, or what the next room even is. It's interesting to see the different strategies used, and I always like this--is that through the interaction, combat, interrogations, and so on--even some roleplaying--I am sometimes thrilled to see whole new plots develop, sometimes even new religions that I have to come up with on the fly, or new cults, new, strange organizations, as well as the wierd plans of some new kind of villain that develops right before my eyes...kinda organically, you know?

It's fun though to use these techniques at times. It can really add some new dimensions and ideas to the campaign. I've surprised myself on more than a few occasions with this...and well, my players have often come up with something crazy, too...some weird interpretation, or some bizarre plot that they *see*...where beforehand, I had never thought of it.

Pretty cool though to do now and then. Have any of you done this kind of improvisational expeditions? Totally off the cuff, and actually used some details though, pre-organized, so to speak?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

 

[TessarrianDM]

I haven't used that technique since 1st edition, with its random dungeon creation tables in the DMG. I moved away from that after the players encountered an adult red dragon in a 30' square room with a 10' ceiling and two normal doors leading to 10' wide corridors...

I now tend to create long-running story arcs that require specific encounter preparation, and are currently centered in the wilderness and cities. Admittedly, there are times when I wish I could get away with some totally random dungeon. This campaign originally began with the players making forays into Undermountain, and I sometimes miss the simplicity of it all.

 

[Ry]

I might do this with dungeon-themed 4 elements (see the sig) but I know if I tried it just with monsters and rooms without that extra layer of structure my players would be bored with it.

 

[DeadlyUematsu]

Random dungeons all the way!

 

[green slime]

I haven't used that technique since 1st edition, with its random dungeon creation tables in the DMG. I moved away from that after the players encountered an adult red dragon in a 30' square room with a 10' ceiling and two normal doors leading to 10' wide corridors...

I now tend to create long-running story arcs that require specific encounter preparation, and are currently centered in the wilderness and cities. Admittedly, there are times when I wish I could get away with some totally random dungeon. This campaign originally began with the players making forays into Undermountain, and I sometimes miss the simplicity of it all.

So instead of just rerolling the result, you threw the entire bathroom out?

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

I haven't used that technique since 1st edition, with its random dungeon creation tables in the DMG. I moved away from that after the players encountered an adult red dragon in a 30' square room with a 10' ceiling and two normal doors leading to 10' wide corridors...

Aw, c'mon, you could've handled that. Polymorphed red dragon. Dragon-in-a-bottle. Et cetera.

 

[Irda Ranger]

As the DM, *I* don't even know what is in the next room, or what the next room even is.

Have any of you done this kind of improvisational expeditions? Totally off the cuff, and actually used some details though, pre-organized, so to speak?

Sounds like it could be fun. What tables do you use?

I don't think very quickly on my feet, unfortunately, so I rarely do this myself. More of a big picture guy.

 

[phindar]

I'm not much on the Big Picture. Or the details. And I usually show up late. And drunk. BUT:

I always wanted to run a random dungeon out of the old 1e table. Never could get a group interested in it though. I would think that the weird results would be part of the fun, as well as an improv aspect of putting the story together as we went along. (I once ran a T&T module, converting it on the fly for AD&D, and it was a lot of fun.)

 

[paradox42]

I used the random dungeon tables from the 1E DMG to come up with one of my homebrew's mega-dungeons- what amounts to the setting's Undermountain, I suppose. When I started up my 3rd Edition game 6 1/2 years ago, I started programming the tables into a Javascript utility set on a web page so I'd be capable of using it on the fly, without having to roll real dice or look up table results and go table-to-table. Since I started my 3E game by having the PCs go exploring in that very same mega-dungeon, and the dungeon itself had a lot of unmapped territories (still does, in fact), it seemed a prudent thing to do.

And BOY have I ever been glad I did! My game is run online, and there were many occasions when the PCs would take a trip in an unexpected direction towards blank paper that, unknown to the players, I was actually scrambling with rolling result after result on the random dungeon utility to map out the dungeon ahead of them as they were going through it. They were literally none the wiser; none of them even suspected I had a random dungeon utility- much less that I was using it- until I mentioned it to them. To this day they've never been sure when I was using it and when I wasn't.

The really nice thing about having a mega-dungeon like that, too, is that it can double as something else when you need it to- I used maps for that mega-dungeon to double as a series of passages carved into a glacier during a trip to a frostfell, passages/settings for "Dream Sequence" adventures where anything goes, a small section of Underdark, and probably more I'm forgetting now.

 

[SHARK]

Sounds like it could be fun. What tables do you use?

I don't think very quickly on my feet, unfortunately, so I rarely do this myself. More of a big picture guy.

Greetings!

Well, Irda Ranger, I have spent some time to modify the random encounter tables by CR in the DM's Guide, carefully customizing them. I flesh out some treasure, the creature's tactics, that kind of thing. Then, I occasionally do something different with a leader character--like a 6th level Gnoll Ranger, or a 10th level Vampire Fighter. Once I have added some cool detail to these different kinds of encounters--I still work to keep them more or less generic, and "open" so to speak. Then, I put them in a file, numbered and catalogued. Then I draw up some tables of different encounters, -1 or -2 CR, up to +4 CR for every "Level" of the dungeon.

With the random numbers assigned, I can roll to determine what the next room, corridor, or cavern is; then I roll and see if there is an encounter; then I roll to see what kind of encounter it is; and wha-laa! That's what's there.

The fighting, or negotiating ensues! It's more random, and I get to experience some of the uncertainty along with the party, and since I don't necessarily have a pre-scripted "plot"--it's a good mechanic to see how a "Plot" actually takes shape.

For example; if the party has had four encounters with undead out of the last 12 encounters, and they start thinking there's a necromancer involved, then I just make a note that several levels down there will be a powerful necromancer, with some kind of plan or scheme going on. It's like the players actually help create a plot, even though they are unconscious of it. It sometimes develops in ways unforseen by me, and turns into a very interesting, and sometimes bizarre adventure--but it's always fun, so it's pretty cool as a technique.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK