Semi-Random Megadungeon "Saturday Night Special" Generation Using Existing Resources

Read here for a definition of megadungeon "Saturday Night Specials." The below procedures can also be used for generated lair/mini/micro-dungeons as well.

Step 1

Roll a d20 and cross reference the result with the dungeon level on this chart that is for use with the excellent "The Underworlds" article from The Best of the Journal: The Pettigrew Selections. This determines the nature of the Saturday Night Special. Although this above table is designed for use for Tekumel games, it should be useful for most mileus. Results may refer to an ancient/ruined City, Palace, Fortress, etc., or a discrete portion of the megadungeon being used for the generated purpose by the current inhabitants (City = Warren of Derro; Palace = Pleasure Den of a Rakshasa; Fortress = Secret Headquarters of an Assassin Cult; etc).

Note that I strongly recommend the aforementioned The Pettigrew selections as a random megadungeon element generation resource, available from Tita's House of Games.

Also note that shrines and temples should have a fair chance of containing some fabulous treasure that horribly curses those that thieve it; a wonderful horror comic and pulp fiction cliche that seems woefully underrepresented in D&D.

I interpret Wizard's Tower to represent a magician's lair and not necessarily a subterranean tower; although an ancient tower buried deep in the earth by the ages or a tower in a gigantic cavern are both pretty cool.

For my usage Canals means constructed or artificial subterranean waterways: sewers, the Black Reservoir, cave rivers all fall in this category.

Nexus Point is a technical Tekumel term for "transdimensional wormhole portal thingy;" in the context of this method we can use it for teleportals, micro-planes, dimensional gates, time travel device, etc.

In the original article Ancient Tunnel refers to the Humanspace Empire era subways tunnels deep in Tekumel's crust; for non-science fantasy-ish campaigns they obviously refer to Atlantean or Lemurian equivalent relics.

Step 2
Generate a name for the special with the Beyond The Black Gate - Random Megadungeon Area Name Generator.

Step 3
Use Dave's Mapper to generate a map of the area of the special; note that you can turn on a 10-foot grid with the buttons along the top. This serves as a workable maze generator, and this does the trick for caves.What I do is generate a geomorph-map and than only use the portions that appeal to me while rearranging elements so as to remove the regular corridor placement. For most specials you probably only need a handful or two of rooms, for usage with Step 4 you will need roughly 8 to 20 rooms (d6+d8+6?).

Step 4
Using the elements generated in Steps 1, 2 & 3, think of a theme for the Saturday Night Special. For example: On level 6 of the megadungeon I generate a result of "Palace," the name "Screaming Archmaze of the Bone God," and with Dave's Mapper and the maze generator I cobble together a sprawling maze. Obviously the luxurious yet labyrinthine domicile of some sort of powerful undead aristocrat with a a functioning small cult.

Now go over to Playing D&D With Porn Stars and Read This. What you do is come up with lists of monsters, traps and treasures appropriate for your Saturday Night Special, start with the first room and work your way to the last room dicing up the contents as you go.

For the palace maze of the Bone God I come up with the following monster list off the top of my head.
8 - Villain: The Bone God, the Lich-ified remains of a God-Emperor from ages past
7 - Lieutenants: Hoochie-mama Vampire consorts
6 - Guardian Beast: Pet Froghemoth
5 - Assistant Managers: Mummy Cleric
4 - Tough Guys: Cultists with Cleric or Magic-user leader
3 - Grunts: Talkative zombie guards
2 - Servants: Dancing & singing skeleton butlers & maids
1 - Vermin: Eye Dropper

Note: Yes, I pretty much come up with the idea of putting a Froghemoth in every dungeon I think of, regardless of how wildly inappropriate it is.

Step 5
Flesh out with Tricks, Traps and Empty Room Design from the Hack & Slash blog. Also, the Wilderness Hexploration Document from the New York Red Box forum has a decent temple generator as well as other random generation resources, you could use the Island tables from it to determine what's on a island in a Canals special.

Assorted Algol Related Material & SPACE!

Bat from Ancient Vaults & Eldritch Secrets freakin' Blows My Mind ...and also may have unintentionally provided a potential solution to an Interplanetary Castaway Situation in my own game...

Il Male of The Doomed Wasteland provides us with Random Robot Generation; Random Cults and Societies in Standard Fantasy and Weird Science Fantasy flavours; and a table for Generating Rough Hexmap Hex Contents.

This blog post is actually a set of bookmarks for when I get more ink cartridges for the money pit printer...

Also:

Put up with first 1:45 or so, it's worth it...

Somewhat relevant to the above video.

Exquisite Corspses - Why Isn't Anyone Talking About This? and Giant Arms

No, I'm not talking about an artistic arrangement of mangled dead adventurers, but instead the Awesome Looking New Project Coming Soon From Stefan Poag, "Exquisite Corpses"

1) It looks to be the next incarnation of the Esoteric Creature Generator, which is pretty cool as multiple random monster generators are far more random than a single random monster generator.

2) The artwork is geared towards 'adults.' No, we're not talking about porno here, just some tasteful T & A and eyeball boners, like the stuff you see everyday in the right sort of underground comics. As an adult, I applaud this strike against kindergartenization/conservative chickenshithood. As someone with a juvenile sense of humor and a dirty mind, hot snake women with boobs and crabmen with eyeball boners never fail to put a smile on my face!

3) The Esoteric Creature Generator is pretty ace, but sometimes the results are pretty inchoate, it's looking like Exquisite Corpses may produce "quicker, simpler" results, and it's nice having multiple options for your random monster creation!

I am very, very stoked by the preview artwork and am looking forward to Exquisite Corpses

Also: How Did I Miss This?!?!

NPC Generation Table Test Results & Planet Algol NPC Alignment Generation Tables

Prung Vorka, Neutral 2nd-level Sage, Shuzakh Man (hairless with skin like a fire newt, black eyes)
Terrible facial scars, one eye, will never betray or abandon an ally.

Kathudi, Chaotic neutral 9th-level Thief, Dhazzi Man (bronze skin and eyes, metallic green hair)
Always has bare arms, is convinced that supernatural forces meddle in his affairs.

Hazarash, Chaotic neutral 6th-level Sorcerer, Kherulhi Man (blue skin, hairless, black eyes)
Wears simple undyed robes, laughs at very inappropriate moments.

Yurud, Neutral 6th-level Sorceress(!), Haasht Woman (jade finely scaled skin, lavender hair, iridescent copper eyes)
Is short and slim and often mistaken for a child, is convinced that she will die soon.

Drekken, Neutral evil 1st-level Assassin, Mhoght Man (purple fine scales, black bushy hair and beard)
Wears a bronze circlet, knows the location of a hidden treasure.

Although I'm biased, I'm digging these results. When I read Drekken's entry an entire plot jumps into my mind! Young, beginning Assassin, finds treasure map, recruits party to aid him, but plans to reward them with murder! (but will likely be way over his head, which is exactly the sort of black comedy I enjoy...)

Kathudi seems suitably "roguish" and both Hazarsh and Yurud fit the bill as eccentric sword & sorcery spellslingers.

Thinking about Drekken and his map brings to mind the treasure map rules in the 1st edition DMG. As I already have several hidden treasures secreted about the Planet Algol sandbox, perhaps I should have allowances for finding specific treasure maps on the Special/Magic/Technological Item treasure table I'm also working on for the Planet Algol booklet. "A holographic crystal shows three red men burying a chest beneath a distinctive rock formation in the Lands of Purple Grass..."

Thinking about how to handle ability scores, three options come to mind. As I'm aiming for this to be "scalable" NPC generation, with different levels of detail dependent on what is desired, this is pretty much a perfect number.

Option A - Ignore Them. They're NPCs, 90% in oldschool D&D they don't even have any mechanical effect, easy enough.

Option B - Standard 3d6 roll, with simple rearrangement allowance dependent on class such as "if a Fighter's strength is their lowest stat and also below 9 switch it with something better"

Option C - Tables of 100 pre-rolled sets of ability scores. One for Fighting-Men, one for Sorcerers, and so forth. Seems like a bit much at first blush, but the more I think about it the more it actually makes sense. This is exactly the kind of resource I want available when I'm DMing.

Here's the tables I'm using for NPC alignments.

d6 Law-Neutral-Chaos
1-2 Lawful
3-4 Neutral
5-6 Chaotic

d10 Good-Neutral-Evil
1 Good *
2-6 Neutral
7-10 Evil

* Originally a result of 1-2 gave a result of Good, but Planet Algol is a wicked, decadent, grasping world...

Further on NPC Generation

The procedures and tables I've developed for NPC generation proved fruitful during today's Planet Algol session and it seems like they're in line with my goals for creating quick, memorable, motivated NPCs.

The process involves using die rolls to generate both the "RPG rules" details of the character, such as class, level, alignment, magic items, etc; and also characteristics that can be used by the referee as improvisational cues for roleplaying, motivations, plot hooks and the like. As previously mentioned, this process is scalable. A couple of rolls for cheap thugs and thorough complex generation if the referee desires.

One thing that become apparent is that I should make different sets of tables for the three main "sword & sorcery" archetypes: fighter, sorcerer and thief.

In attempting to systematize creating at least the simulacrum of memorable, "living" personalities, my latest categorization of such elements breaks down as follows:

Appearance: "Wears heavy dinosaur hide bracers," "Has a broken nose," "Never wears a shirt"
External Personality: "Laughs at everything like Dr. Hibbert," "Wants to be everyone's friend," "Doesn't like small talk"
Internal Personality: "Insanely jealous and will hold murderous grudges over perceived slights," "Will never betray an ally," "Falls in love way to easily"
Agenda/Motivation: "Wants to explore other worlds," "Very greedy," "Hates slavers"
Complications: "An evil scientist has implanted a mind control device in brain," Member of Great Old One cult," "On a secret mission for a Lawful Baron"
Possessions: "A prism which reveals all illusions," "Unbreakable dull gray knife," "Beige cowled desert robes"

Planet Algol Artwork Preview and Robust, Procedural NPC Generation Musings

Above is a preview of the artwork in the upcoming Planet Algol Booklet, in this case a depiction of the battle with the Psyclops in the ruins of the Serpent Men by the estimable Robin Ruddock.

I've been lackadaisically knocking away at the encounter & NPC generation section of the Planet Algol booklet. One of my aims, keeping in line with my design goal of making the booklet a reference that I would use while DMing, is making the tables and processes for "Robust Procedural NPC Generation."

For example, on an encounter table I get a result of "sole NPC." I roll a handful of dice and now I know the sole NPC is "Kyarthog Myrlexlillian, Lawful Neutral Dhazzi Man, 3rd-level Fighting Man, +1 trident, scimitar, banded mail, 110 gp, collection of various lenses, member of a mercenary guild, is inordinately fond of candy, on a secret mission to find a lost treasure for a Baron."

Ideally this should scalable and context sensitive. Simple, fast methods for random thugs and guards as opposed to detailed complex options for more important personages. Important henchmen, adversarial villains and powerful wicked sorcerers deserve a wide, deep set of generation options.

And the tables for generating armament should be geared towards funky, flavorful, genre-appropriate combos such as trident and whip or scimitar and throwing knives.

Hello Beautiful, I See Your Sister is Lovely As Well

I know there's plenty of random dungeon map generators on the internet but I think that this one and this one possess an especially sublime combination of utility and beauty. Sure there's no grid, but it's easy enough to throw some graph paper into the printer!

PS. When computers "auto-word-complete" for me it drives me bonkers. (me to word processor program "Why don't you let me write this?") It is especially aggravating when I'm trying to imput tags for a blog post and the auto-complete strong-arms the wrong word in. Anyone know how to turn it off?