Three Nodes Dungeon
note:
English is not my native language so this might be a little difficult read at times, I apologize.
So last night I was sleepless in bed and thinking about how nice Chicagowiz three hexes as a campaign starter are, and because I currently create some dungeons for my playgroup and had great fun drawing some maps I thought it might be fun to create dungeons that way.
I draw parallels between creating three hexes as a campaign starter to the Alexandrians node based approach. Every hex represents a node connected by edges to other nodes. In the three hex example there is always a homebase on which the players start out, which is most of the time directly connected to the three hexes. This falls nicely into the node based interpretation of the three clues rule the Alexandrian described on his blog.
So how to design dungeons this way?
First of all, let me do a small little definition. Every dungeoncrawl, hexcrawl or idk pubcrawl is a pointcrawl, if you abstract all defining elements away and leave only the bare bones. You have points of interests/nodes which are connected by edges that are traversable by the player characters under certain conditions. In city pointcrawl games, those edges could be streets. In hexcrawls those are the 6 directions you can walk on to reach another hex. Dungeoncrawls are a little bit less straightforward, because hallways can have hidden points of interest, like secret doors, traps or monsters that players can interact with. Also it is possible to have dungeons without hallways at all. It becomes a little blurry to decide what is a node and what isn't in a dungeoncrawl, but to that I will come a little later.
I will use the term *-crawl as the abstract superset of all crawl type of games, to differentiate between the often used gamestructure "pointcrawl" and the template this gamestructure is build upon. I will call the points of interest in this structure simply nodes and the connections between them edges.
We don't have to consider a single node in a dungeon only consisting of one room. When we look closely at hexes or points on a hex/pointcrawl, there is always some kind of granularity. A homebase, for example, often has an inn, a blacksmith, a stable, maybe a castle, some npcs.Those "subnodes" are less fleshed out in most cases, because it is feasible to create them on the fly as a dm.
So based on this observation, I deduce that the nodes on *-crawls have an theoretical infinite granularity, meaning each node has possible subnodes, which might have possible subnodes as well. As a DM you can go as deep as you possibly want with details of a point of interest.
These nodes behave a little bit like Trees.
So my idea for creating a simple four node dungeon would mean to find the smallest possible, but gameable, tree or graph that fully describes a parent-node and then connect them.
As I pointed out, hallways are not edges, but often extensions of nodes or sometimes nodes on their own. How do nodes look like in dungeon? For this, I'll take a look into my favorite D&D edition: basic/expert.
basic/expert d&d has a table to stock a dungeon with radom contents that looks like this:
A lot of things can fall into this very broad group of terms. And hallways often have some of those features as well. I will use Empty, Monster, Special and Trap as kind of atomic node for comfortable creation, which I will generate with the help of Tricks,Empty Rooms,& Basic Trap Design By Courtney C. Campbell.
Alright, that does it for the smallest scale.
There is also the 5 rooms approach to generating dungeons, which if you think about is just a 5-nodes approach to creating dungeons, which I will use inspiration from for the 3-nodes approach.
Saying that, I am not too keen on always creating the same dungeon that always has the same elements.
"Personally, I’m not a huge fan of the 5 Room Dungeon: Partially because its structure is too rigid (which results in effective material, but also very predictable material if you use it too frequently)."
-The Alexandrian, 5-node-mystery
As described in this reddit post the poster used the 5RD-approach to determine the overlaying layout of their megadungeons, which fits in nicely with the content generation of b/x if you think about it:
-Empty, Monster, Special, Trap are the lowest level of defined nodes.
-Puzzle or Roleplaying Challenge, Trick or Setback, Big Climax and Reward, Revelation could be he highest level of defined nodes, with Entrance And Guardian functioning as the homebase node in the 3-hex starter approach.
That means, that in true OSR fashion, one could create a small random table to determine the top nodes of the dungeon layout, with a little bit of adjustment.
I present to you the Random Dungeon Section Content Table:
This will mean not every dungeon will possibly have a Reward or Relevation, or even multiple. but that is okay for me.
Now with top and bottom-node defined, I will decide that every top-node has 1d3 bottom-nodes, which would translate to 4-12 things for the players to fiddle with.
After I created the abstract structure of the dungeon I will populate it with maybe one faction and then create a wandering monster table based on Chris McDowalls small tables, when I have a clear picture of the dungeon in my mind.
With this, I can finally start creating the first small dungeon with the three nodes approach.
In honor of those very smart dms whose works I freely used to improve my own gameplay, I will dedicate my first dungeon to Chicagowiz' first 3 hex campaign setting.
With the first three rolls on the section content table and some thinking, I came up with this structure:
After rolling on the bottom node table I get:
And finally after consulting Tricks.pdf:
Now, The last part in graphing out the structure that is left is cleaning up and connecting the bottom nodes with eachother while removing or creating one or two edges to taste:
It may not look like it, but with that the dungeon is pretty much done.
I'll be honest, it is maybe a bit much for such a super small dungeon, but from what I've seen it does fulfill two criteria:
-It is scaleable, I could pretty much repeat the same procedure on a larger structures
-It gets creativity flowing. This creation process helped me personally to really get a feel of the place.
Also, this post serves as an exercise for me to create some small and fun locations and maps and maybe illuminate a handful of things about gamestructures and effective prep.
And with that, there are only five small things left: a small summary, wandering monsters, a rumor table, a map that I will draw for your viewing pleasure and a map key that is readable for humans.
I will create a rumor for each top node of the dungeon, except the entry point, which will have two. Then I will fill the last slot with a false rumor.
The Cavern of the Dale Woods
Currently home to a kobold tribe, this abadoned dwarven ruin sits lonely and forgotten in the Dale Woods. Entrance is prevented by a great chasm, which has one single bridge that often is observed by the Kobolds. The Kobolds idolize a locked up Rogue AI that is hidden away in the dungeon and sometimes speaks to them in cryptic dreams.
Rumors
1: Most of the time two kobolds guard this area here. There is a 1 in 6 chance that they are currently not there. The next guards will appear in 1d3*10 minutes. If they spot anybody who isn't of their tribe, they will rush to the bridge and lower it. They have a rope on their end which allows them to pull it back when the danger is gone. If this doesn't work both of them will run to 6 to alarm their tribe. The ground, in typical kobold fashion, is trapped with bear traps.
2: This is an old Armory, guarded by 3 fighter constructs and 1 wizard construct.
It is visible from the outside and is around 30 feet below the edge.
The room contains mostly garbage, but in the lockers are the following: 1 shotgun, 6 shells, kevlar armor, 3 potions of health and some gold/silver. (put an apropriate ammount for your setting here)
3: This ruin seems like an old dwarven courthouse, official building or something else of that sort. There are legal documents and other stuff lying around. Digging around will let the players find: a very old map, a flag, some candles, books, paper, etc.
4: This is an old ruined dwarven library. Contains bookshelves, old books, etc. Players might find something valuable if they know what they are searching for. 1 in 6 chance to find an expensive book. Those are heavy to carry though.
The fallen over bookshelf is attached to a tripwire that will let something noisy fall down the stairs if triggered and will alarm the kobolds below in 6.
5: At the entrance of this ruinous hall lies a dead person that got shot by one of the two turrets in this room. They take one round to target and make a very intimidating whirring sound. (4d6 damage)
At the western wall of this room is a small computer system that is connected to the two turrets. It is trapped though, pulling the cables will trigger a granade that was hidden in one of the computers. save against 6d6 damage, if the character saves they will only take half damage.
The computer runs on a dwarven operating system that might be impossible for the party to comprehend.
6: Here are around 5-10 kobolds and a shaman busy eating, drinking, socializing or playing games.
7: On the eastern wall is a little shrine with an idol made out of tin foil. the idol has eight extremities and look kind of alien/strange. try to describe a high tech robot without saying high tech robot. The room holds a lot of crude music instruments that are created in a way to mimic mechanical whirring or digital beeping. It most likely sounds grating to civilized folk.
8: This is a bestiary containing pretty damn large rabbits the kobolds bred. They are actually pretty agressive and strong. Taming one of those Caverabbits might be challenging but possible.
Behind the largest cage in which the meanest looking resides is a hidden door to 5, which the kobolds closed up because they don't feel like explaining their offspring everytime to not go into that room.
9: The lair of the thing the kobolds describe as a psychic thunderbold god trapped inside metal. There is a shining contraption in the form of a creature with 8 limbs. It looks like straight from space or the astral plane or something. It is hooked up to a computer. When somebody enters the creature in the computer will try to convince them to hook them back up to their body.
This is a grave mistake though, the only interest of the AI is destruction. It knows the location of another functional dwarven arsenal that actually holds nukes. If freed it will go straight there to detonate them. The creature is extremely powerful and will just kill anyone who stands in its way. Freeing it will end Enonia and possibly the rest of the already weakened civilisation.
And thats it.
English is not my native language so this might be a little difficult read at times, I apologize.
So last night I was sleepless in bed and thinking about how nice Chicagowiz three hexes as a campaign starter are, and because I currently create some dungeons for my playgroup and had great fun drawing some maps I thought it might be fun to create dungeons that way.
I draw parallels between creating three hexes as a campaign starter to the Alexandrians node based approach. Every hex represents a node connected by edges to other nodes. In the three hex example there is always a homebase on which the players start out, which is most of the time directly connected to the three hexes. This falls nicely into the node based interpretation of the three clues rule the Alexandrian described on his blog.
So how to design dungeons this way?
First of all, let me do a small little definition. Every dungeoncrawl, hexcrawl or idk pubcrawl is a pointcrawl, if you abstract all defining elements away and leave only the bare bones. You have points of interests/nodes which are connected by edges that are traversable by the player characters under certain conditions. In city pointcrawl games, those edges could be streets. In hexcrawls those are the 6 directions you can walk on to reach another hex. Dungeoncrawls are a little bit less straightforward, because hallways can have hidden points of interest, like secret doors, traps or monsters that players can interact with. Also it is possible to have dungeons without hallways at all. It becomes a little blurry to decide what is a node and what isn't in a dungeoncrawl, but to that I will come a little later.
I will use the term *-crawl as the abstract superset of all crawl type of games, to differentiate between the often used gamestructure "pointcrawl" and the template this gamestructure is build upon. I will call the points of interest in this structure simply nodes and the connections between them edges.
We don't have to consider a single node in a dungeon only consisting of one room. When we look closely at hexes or points on a hex/pointcrawl, there is always some kind of granularity. A homebase, for example, often has an inn, a blacksmith, a stable, maybe a castle, some npcs.Those "subnodes" are less fleshed out in most cases, because it is feasible to create them on the fly as a dm.
So based on this observation, I deduce that the nodes on *-crawls have an theoretical infinite granularity, meaning each node has possible subnodes, which might have possible subnodes as well. As a DM you can go as deep as you possibly want with details of a point of interest.
These nodes behave a little bit like Trees.
So my idea for creating a simple four node dungeon would mean to find the smallest possible, but gameable, tree or graph that fully describes a parent-node and then connect them.
As I pointed out, hallways are not edges, but often extensions of nodes or sometimes nodes on their own. How do nodes look like in dungeon? For this, I'll take a look into my favorite D&D edition: basic/expert.
basic/expert d&d has a table to stock a dungeon with radom contents that looks like this:
| d6 | Contents | Chance of Treasure |
| 1-2 | Empty | 1-in-6 |
| 3-4 | Monster | 3-in-6 |
| 5 | Special | None |
| 6 | Trap | 2-in-6 |
A lot of things can fall into this very broad group of terms. And hallways often have some of those features as well. I will use Empty, Monster, Special and Trap as kind of atomic node for comfortable creation, which I will generate with the help of Tricks,Empty Rooms,& Basic Trap Design By Courtney C. Campbell.
Alright, that does it for the smallest scale.
There is also the 5 rooms approach to generating dungeons, which if you think about is just a 5-nodes approach to creating dungeons, which I will use inspiration from for the 3-nodes approach.
Saying that, I am not too keen on always creating the same dungeon that always has the same elements.
"Personally, I’m not a huge fan of the 5 Room Dungeon: Partially because its structure is too rigid (which results in effective material, but also very predictable material if you use it too frequently)."
-The Alexandrian, 5-node-mystery
As described in this reddit post the poster used the 5RD-approach to determine the overlaying layout of their megadungeons, which fits in nicely with the content generation of b/x if you think about it:
-Empty, Monster, Special, Trap are the lowest level of defined nodes.
-Puzzle or Roleplaying Challenge, Trick or Setback, Big Climax and Reward, Revelation could be he highest level of defined nodes, with Entrance And Guardian functioning as the homebase node in the 3-hex starter approach.
That means, that in true OSR fashion, one could create a small random table to determine the top nodes of the dungeon layout, with a little bit of adjustment.
I present to you the Random Dungeon Section Content Table:
| d6 | Contents |
| 1-2 | Puzzle or Roleplaying Challenge |
| 3-4 | Trick or Setback |
| 5 | Dangerous Obstacle |
| 6 | Reward, Relevation |
This will mean not every dungeon will possibly have a Reward or Relevation, or even multiple. but that is okay for me.
Now with top and bottom-node defined, I will decide that every top-node has 1d3 bottom-nodes, which would translate to 4-12 things for the players to fiddle with.
After I created the abstract structure of the dungeon I will populate it with maybe one faction and then create a wandering monster table based on Chris McDowalls small tables, when I have a clear picture of the dungeon in my mind.
With this, I can finally start creating the first small dungeon with the three nodes approach.
In honor of those very smart dms whose works I freely used to improve my own gameplay, I will dedicate my first dungeon to Chicagowiz' first 3 hex campaign setting.
The Cavern of Dale Woods
The Dale Woods are home to the crafty kobolds. Brave hunters who dare enter the woods have found entrances to what seems to be a cave system, but none dare go within. Between the Dale Woods and Dark Woods lies the abandoned road to Irecia - with a bridge that crosses over a stream.With the first three rolls on the section content table and some thinking, I came up with this structure:
After rolling on the bottom node table I get:
And finally after consulting Tricks.pdf:
Now, The last part in graphing out the structure that is left is cleaning up and connecting the bottom nodes with eachother while removing or creating one or two edges to taste:
It may not look like it, but with that the dungeon is pretty much done.
I'll be honest, it is maybe a bit much for such a super small dungeon, but from what I've seen it does fulfill two criteria:
-It is scaleable, I could pretty much repeat the same procedure on a larger structures
-It gets creativity flowing. This creation process helped me personally to really get a feel of the place.
Also, this post serves as an exercise for me to create some small and fun locations and maps and maybe illuminate a handful of things about gamestructures and effective prep.
And with that, there are only five small things left: a small summary, wandering monsters, a rumor table, a map that I will draw for your viewing pleasure and a map key that is readable for humans.
I will create a rumor for each top node of the dungeon, except the entry point, which will have two. Then I will fill the last slot with a false rumor.
The Cavern of the Dale Woods
Currently home to a kobold tribe, this abadoned dwarven ruin sits lonely and forgotten in the Dale Woods. Entrance is prevented by a great chasm, which has one single bridge that often is observed by the Kobolds. The Kobolds idolize a locked up Rogue AI that is hidden away in the dungeon and sometimes speaks to them in cryptic dreams.
Rumors
- Kobolds live in the ancient ruins
- The old Ruin is between a cliff face and a chasm
- There is a dark spirit lurking beneath the Ruins
- Legends say that an ancient armory with exotic weapons is located in the ruins
- Creatures made of metal roam those long abandoned halls.
- The Kobolds are said to have unimaginable riches (false)
- 1d6 Kobolds
- 1d4 Kobolds and a giant Rabbit (2HD, saves like a specialist, 1d6-1 bite)
- 1d6 Kobolds and 1 Kobold Warlock (2HD, 1xcause light wounds, is carrying a Horn to make crude music)
- 1d3 humanoid Automatons with swords (3HD, armor like plate, saves like a fighter, carrying a Sword)
- 1d3 humanoid Automaton with a Rod and Wizard hat (3HD, armor like plate, saves like a fighter, 2x magic missile, carrying a stick (1d3) for when it runs out of spells)
- A spider automaton with a turret mounted on top. (8HD, resistant to magic, 4d6 dmg per shot)
1: Most of the time two kobolds guard this area here. There is a 1 in 6 chance that they are currently not there. The next guards will appear in 1d3*10 minutes. If they spot anybody who isn't of their tribe, they will rush to the bridge and lower it. They have a rope on their end which allows them to pull it back when the danger is gone. If this doesn't work both of them will run to 6 to alarm their tribe. The ground, in typical kobold fashion, is trapped with bear traps.
2: This is an old Armory, guarded by 3 fighter constructs and 1 wizard construct.
It is visible from the outside and is around 30 feet below the edge.
The room contains mostly garbage, but in the lockers are the following: 1 shotgun, 6 shells, kevlar armor, 3 potions of health and some gold/silver. (put an apropriate ammount for your setting here)
3: This ruin seems like an old dwarven courthouse, official building or something else of that sort. There are legal documents and other stuff lying around. Digging around will let the players find: a very old map, a flag, some candles, books, paper, etc.
4: This is an old ruined dwarven library. Contains bookshelves, old books, etc. Players might find something valuable if they know what they are searching for. 1 in 6 chance to find an expensive book. Those are heavy to carry though.
The fallen over bookshelf is attached to a tripwire that will let something noisy fall down the stairs if triggered and will alarm the kobolds below in 6.
5: At the entrance of this ruinous hall lies a dead person that got shot by one of the two turrets in this room. They take one round to target and make a very intimidating whirring sound. (4d6 damage)
At the western wall of this room is a small computer system that is connected to the two turrets. It is trapped though, pulling the cables will trigger a granade that was hidden in one of the computers. save against 6d6 damage, if the character saves they will only take half damage.
The computer runs on a dwarven operating system that might be impossible for the party to comprehend.
6: Here are around 5-10 kobolds and a shaman busy eating, drinking, socializing or playing games.
7: On the eastern wall is a little shrine with an idol made out of tin foil. the idol has eight extremities and look kind of alien/strange. try to describe a high tech robot without saying high tech robot. The room holds a lot of crude music instruments that are created in a way to mimic mechanical whirring or digital beeping. It most likely sounds grating to civilized folk.
8: This is a bestiary containing pretty damn large rabbits the kobolds bred. They are actually pretty agressive and strong. Taming one of those Caverabbits might be challenging but possible.
Behind the largest cage in which the meanest looking resides is a hidden door to 5, which the kobolds closed up because they don't feel like explaining their offspring everytime to not go into that room.
9: The lair of the thing the kobolds describe as a psychic thunderbold god trapped inside metal. There is a shining contraption in the form of a creature with 8 limbs. It looks like straight from space or the astral plane or something. It is hooked up to a computer. When somebody enters the creature in the computer will try to convince them to hook them back up to their body.
This is a grave mistake though, the only interest of the AI is destruction. It knows the location of another functional dwarven arsenal that actually holds nukes. If freed it will go straight there to detonate them. The creature is extremely powerful and will just kill anyone who stands in its way. Freeing it will end Enonia and possibly the rest of the already weakened civilisation.
And thats it.
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