Write Room Descriptions

Room descriptions define the permanent features of a dungeon: its dangers, its treasures, and its denizens. Non-permanent features players may encounter in such rooms are handled by the Meatgrinder (p. 340). Create something interesting for players to interact with for each room in each dungeon.

A key component of exploration is meaningful choice. For a choice to be meaningful, the rewards and risks must be clear. Imagine what clues you can place in the dungeon that broadcast the nature of its contents. For example, if you hide treasure inside a stone sarcophagus, you can clearly demonstrate that it’s trapped by describing the bodies of mangled adventurers around the tomb.

As you write about your entities, traps, treasures, monsters, etc., decide where to place them on the map. At first, just place them where it seems best. You can move them around later, or even redraw parts of the map if you need.

Each room in each dungeon level should have at least one of the following:

• A reason to explore

• A reason to breathe easy

• A reason to flee

• A reason to experiment

• A reason to talk

• A reason to be surprised

• A reason to fight

• A reason to return

Use these elements as a checklist as you write your own room descriptions. We’ve provided example dungeon features and traps that you can use, starting on page 365.

Creating usable notes (sidebar)

When writing room descriptions, you’ll want to provide enough detail that you’ll remember what you intended. At the same time, you do yourself a disservice writing down long room descriptions absolutely detailing every nook and cranny— your improvisational skills will serve you better than long descriptions.

First, decide on a standard level of lighting . Is it pitch dark? Are there sources of low light? Decide what other physical sensations (temperature, smell, sound) are standard in this level.

While writing your descriptions, bold words that are important or can be interacted with . This will allow you to tell, at a glance, what you initially describe.

Use bullet points to nest information that players can only discover by interacting with the room. This allows you to quickly parse what you first describe versus what you describe as players investigate specific areas; see “What Can I See?” on page 183.

A reason to explore

Each dungeon should have something the players want. This might be gold, equipment, information, helpful characters, or beneficial dungeon features.

The players have told you what they want when they wrote down their quests (p. 24). Your dungeon’s boons can relate to these quests or they can be more broadly applicable. For example:

• The finfolk of the Boundless Moat have an idol to their weird fish god whose eyes are precious emeralds.

• The genii of the Hellmarkt are selling a magic sword that can open any door in the Undertomb.

• The harpies of the Field of Reeds are pretty good conversationalists and know a lot of rumors about the Underworld. You just better not meet them when they’re hungry.

• A sword-saint has retired to the City of Ruin. If you make a pilgrimage to her, she will teach you her skills.

• The Spires are rumored to contain a pool that can heal any wound, but you can only bathe in it once.

A reason to flee

Not every battle can be won. The players should occasionally be faced with a foe who cannot be defeated through honest combat. Place some large, overwhelming, or magically potent creatures into each dungeon to keep things dangerous.

For example:

• Dragons

• Seriously put a dragon in your dungeon

A reason to talk

If every creature attacks on sight, the game quickly becomes a slog. It’s much more interesting if players can talk to just about everything. (More ways to interact = more choices. Choices are fun.)

For each level of your Underworld, decide on a faction or factions that currently hold power there. Then answer:

• What do they want?

• What do they not want?

By answering these two questions, you have a way to frame social interactions with this faction. Insightful role-playing that appeals to these wants should provide opportunities to avoid hostility or gain leverage.

For example:

• A sisterhood of dire spiders who weave their history into their web tapestries:

• They want pieces of fine art, living hellflies to eat, and interesting stories.

• They don’t want adventurers to carry open flame (dangerous for their tapestries) or for the harpies to find their nest.

• A family of xenophobic ghouls who believe themselves descended from royalty:

• They want fresh bones to gnaw, to be flattered, and their ancient treasures to be restored to them.

• They don’t want their halls to be tainted with lesser beings (such as the guild).

Even hostile forces can provide rich role-playing opportunities: through shouted insults, players can learn about an enemy’s motivations, current plans, belief systems, or the dungeon level in general.

When planning social encounters, don’t neglect to address the myriad languages spoken in the City (p. 29). Having different creatures speak different languages— or providing contextually different information based on the language spoken to them—can reward adventurers’ linguistic ranges and give different players a time to shine.

A reason to fight

Not everything can be negotiated with. Interesting combats can be thrilling.

Place some creatures in each dungeon whose default Disposition is aggressive. This might be a non-sentient creature that sees the adventurers as food (like a slime) or a creature whose worldview directly conflicts with the guild’s (like a skeleton who sees meat creatures as slave drivers unfairly imprisoning their brethren).

For example:

• Imps (procreate through violence)

• Rust grubs (hungry for the guild’s metal)

• Angry ghosts (resentful of the guild’s life)

• Jack of Napes (a gnome serial killer; just a real jerk)

A reason to breathe easy

Dungeons should have safe spaces. Empty rooms provide lacunas in the frenetic pace of the Crawl. Safe spaces are a chance to pause, camp, hold the line, set ambushes, or scheme in peace.

Some rooms are safe because they are secret, particularly defensible, or protected by some magical force. Others are safe simply because they are empty of permanent residents. (These rooms can become dangerous if the Meatgrinder determines a random encounter or other danger enters the room.)

On your map, mark a handful of rooms as safe. Put a word or two in your notes that describe the room’s basic look and feel.

“My name is Ozymandias,

king of kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty,

and despair.”

– Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley

A reason to experiment

Create things that are interesting to interact with. These can be dangerous or helpful, but should be big, obvious, and weird. These features can be interesting on their own merits, but they also provide opportunities for dungeon elements to react to each other. What happens when a player puts an unbreakable dragon egg into the degenerate dwarves’ hydraulic press, for example?

As the players encounter these features, they’ll experiment with them to learn how they work. Overcoming obstacles will create a sense of accomplishment that your players will savor. Similarly, if the players manage to transform something dangerous into something helpful, the sense of accomplishment will be all the deeper.

Most dungeons benefit from at least a few things that are pretty gonzo. Write out some crazy ideas. Cut the ones that seem silly or hard to communicate to your players.

For example:

• An idol to the machine god, hands cupped to receive offerings. Any item placed into the hands is broken down into its constituent parts.

• A huge nut spinning around a huge, threaded column. If appropriately powered, the nut will turn to create an elevator that moves up and down between the dungeon levels.

• A pipe organ made out of stalactites. Different songs have different effects on the local ghost population.

Once clever players understand how a feature works, they can turn this information to their advantage. For example, if the players figure out how to trigger a trap, they can lure monsters into it or use the trap to smash open locked chests.

A reason to be surprised

Though information allows the players to make meaningful choices, it’s essential there are still opportunities for exploration, discovery, and surprise. Not everything should be obvious at first glance. Create some secrets that keep players invested in investigating the dungeon.

For example:

• A secret door behind a huge oil painting of Xania.

• A large X on the wall that shows where a sorcerer should place their portable hole to enter the secret wizard’s tavern.

• A room full of apparently blank books. The books’ text can only be read in the light of a particular phase of the moon.

Next, create clues that point to these secrets. Good clues aren’t immediately obvious on the surface, but seem obvious in retrospect—like the answer to a riddle.

Clues can be built from pattern recognition. For example:

• Picture four halls in a square block. Three have a door on the right that opens into a 10’ x 10’ room; one hallway doesn’t. Observant players should see there’s a place where a room should be, but isn’t present on the map.

• A row of four monkey statues: one hiding its eyes, one hiding its mouth, one plugging its ears, one making a rude gesture. If the players investigate the rudely gesturing one, they’ll find a cache of coins at its base.

Clues can also be embedded in sensory data. For example:

• A hallway with a secret door has a strange draft.

• A hallway with a hidden fire trap has soot blackened around its trigger and smells strongly of oil.

A reason to return

A single dungeon level does not exist in isolation: it is just one part of an interconnected megadungeon. Create reasons for the guild to visit each level multiple times.

For example:

• A gargantuan door can only be opened if a huge wheel is turned. Lure the giant hamster from another level to the wheel to open the door.

• A section of the City of Ruin is flooded because the Boundless Moat is leaking into it. Defeat the frog demon that controls Ruin’s sewers to stop the leak.

• The forest witch of the Spires will only help you if you take a letter to her sister, the sea witch of the Boundless Moat. Deliver the letter to get her aid.

• A gargoyle can answer your questions, but its ears are broken off and hidden in another room of this dungeon. Find the gargoyle’s ears to talk to it.

“I realised that the search for the Knowledge has encouraged us to think of the House as if it were a sort of riddle to be unraveled, a text to be interpreted, and that if ever we discover the Knowledge, then it will be as if the Value has been wrested from the House and all that remains will be mere scenery.”

– Piranesi, Susanna Clarke