The Random Dungeon: Room Negative One
Do you recognize this?
Hey! It’s the start area example chart for Appendix A of the DMG for the original Dungeons and Dragons game! For people who played the game in much of the seventies and eighties, this was probably the first place you explored. Some crazy room with multiple branching hallways (Except stunted Number Four. Nobody likes you Number Four!) leading to various doors. The point was to find some neutral ground between the way back home, and the various twisty turning branches that would be your adventure.
Cool, and evocative, huh? They also hold a high nostalgia value for Dungeon Masters. You see, in many of my fellow DM’s eyes, they see these six shapes, and they just want to get drawing, or rolling for random rooms to attach to these suckers. These six shapes (well, five of them at least) are practically calling for you to scribble away, attaching doodads and doohickies, until you wake up in a fever pitch, with a pencil clutched in hand and a finished dungeon.
But, secretly, as good as five of these shapes are for your imagination, they can stifle your creativity.
Everything in your dungeon will spawn from how you begin your dungeon. But these strange starting shapes you’re presented with only encourage you to draw more goofy shapes. It doesn’t explain why the players are here, or who built this dungeon, or what the theme of this setting is. It’s just a weird shape, devoid of any emotion besides the symbolism you put into it.
That’s why I made this random room generator. Room Negative One is a quick two rolls that mold the purpose of your dungeon. First, roll on the “Dungeon Location” chart to determine what environment your dungeon takes place in, then roll on the “Dungeon Purpose” chart to determine why, exactly, this dungeon is here, and what role it takes in the world your characters play in. Or don’t roll anything and just choose from the list. That’s cool, too. Oh an you’re more than welcome to roll multiple times. Many of these entries are better when combined with other entries.
While we’re here and talking about it, I should remind you that every step which brings you closer to the dungeon itself can be an adventure. If you roll up a Volcano Wizard Fortress, I think you owe it to your players to describe what it looks like on your travel to the volcano, create some small adventures before you get to the fortress itself, and deal, somehow, with the guards who are outside the fortress. I mean, if I was a wizard, and I owned a volcano fortress, I probably wouldn’t leave the front door open, leading down to a set of stairs into a safe and cool start area. I might, however, leave an open door that leads down a set of stairs to an empty Start Area Four, in which all doors lead to veins of liquid magma. That’d show ’em.
Oh, and when you get done making your dungeon, maybe you’d like to populate it with Random 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons monsters?
Where is this Dungeon located?
01 – 03 At the heart of a city
04 – 06 At the heart of a ghost town
07 – 08 The Dungeon is a City
09 – 11 Outside a small village
12 – 13 At the site of an acient battle
14 – 16 At the heart of a forest
17 -19 At the heart of a jungle
20 – 21 At the heart of a Fungal Bloom
22 At the heart of a strange forest made up of odd plant-life
23 Inside a crystal forest
24 In a topiary garden
25 – 26 In the canopy of a forest or jungle
27- 28 Inside the great trees of a forest or jungle
29 – 31 The base of a great mountain
32 – 34 At the peaks of a mountain
35 In a Magnetic Mountain
36 – 37 In the middle of a mountain pass
38 – 40 Inside a canyon
41 – 42 Inside an ancient excavation site
43 – 44 Inside a dormant volcano
45 – 46 Inside a very active volcano
47 – 49 Amid badlands
50 In a land constantly buried under mudslides
51 – 52 In a land constantly torn up by earthquakes
53- 55 In a swamp – a wetlands dominated by trees
56 – 58 In a marsh – a wetlands dominated by grasses and reeds
68 Inside of an iceberg / the dungeon is the iceberg
59 – 60 In a bog – a wetlands covered in peat
61 A castle in the clouds
62 A series of floating landmasses in the sky
63 Suspended via Orbital Ring
64 – 66 In a frozen wasteland
67 On top of an iceberg
69 On the back of a giant monster
70 The dungeon is a giant monster
71 – 73 A sea cave
74 – 76 A sunken city
77 On a giant ship
78 Inside some sort of breathable liquid, swimmable gas
79 On a series of islands
80 Connected via a river network
81 – 83 In the midst of a desert
84 – 85 In the midst of salt flats
86 – 87 As a part of a huge man-made monument
88 – 90 Deep in the Underdark
91 – 92 Within a wildmagic zone
93 – 95 In another dimension / A gateway to another dimension
96 Amid floating stones
97 In a land of perpetual rain
98 -99 In a crater left behind by an asteroid
100 On top of a smoldering coal seam like in Centralia, Pennsylvania, or Burning Mountain, Australia
Why is there a dungeon here? What purpose does the dungeon serve?
01 – 03 A Prison with cells, guards and common areas
04 – 05 An Oubliette, similar to a prison, but with the intention of forgetting the prisoner even existed. No guards, no cells, and no way out
06 – 07 A pen for training slaves
08 – 09 The headquarters for a secret / semi-secret organization
10 – 12 A place of worship for a cult
13 – 15 An ancient temple
16 – 18 Catacombs
19 – 20 One mammoth tomb
21 – 22 An ancient place of learning / A forgotten library
23 – 24 The creation of a madman
25 – 26 Some creature or society’s food supply
27 – 28 Provides some natural resource of magic
29 – 30 A site of great magic, where rituals are often performed / are about to be performed
31 – 33 A sewer system
34 – 35 A gateway between worlds
36 – 37 An elaborate and luxurious home, full of curios
38 – 40 A dangerous, but necessary way to get between two destinations
41 There is no Room Negative One, or none that the players no about, since they were teleported/dropped into the middle of the dungeon.
42 – 43 A mine
44 – 45 A factory / A workshop
46 – 47 A black market
48 – 49 An observation post
50 A monster hotel / destination spot / hospital
51 – 52 Left behind by a mysterious civilization
53 – 54 A staging ground for an invasion / a past invasion
55 – 57 A warrens / Cheap monster housing / Slums
58 – 59 A barracks
60 – 61 An intentional maze / A labyrinth
62 – 63 A vault
64 – 65 A terrible curse which has frightened off all but the ignorant and the foolish
68 – 69 A once great place, which has become infected / infested
66 – 67 The Dungeon is haunted and has frightened off all but the ignorant and the foolish
70 – 72 A meeting ground or neutral zone between two or more powerful tribes
73 – 74 A training simulation of a real dungeon
75 – 77 A rite of passage
78 – 79 The creator of the dungeon built it to prove how intelligent and diabolical he can be
89 – 81 The dungeon is a gigantic monument
82 A Den of Thieves
83 An assassin’s guild
84 A mercenary headquarters
85 A raider’s hideout
86 -87 A house of sin
88 – 89 A castle – a fortified structure, intended to protect its citizens
90 – 91 A keep – a fortified structure designed to protect something
92 – 93 A nursery / Breeding ground / Spawning pit / Evolution vat
94 – 95 A magic laboratory / An experiment chamber
96 Training grounds
97 – 98 Surviving the dungeon is seen as sport / part of a contest
99 An arena
100 An intentional death trap, for the purpose of misdirecting wary adventurers away from the real hiding spot
