this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2025
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It's meant to be played on graph paper. The general idea is a randomly generated dungeon crawl. When you get to a door, you roll 1d6 and draw the next room! Each M is a monster, and each L is loot, which also has random tables to determine what is what, or you could use random tables from any other system with the general idea.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's awesome. How do you handle backtracks that don't line up?

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Since I'm playing in a notebook, I will just shorten or slightly extend rooms as needed and make doors (they must have been hidden the first time through ๐Ÿ˜…) to connect to previous rooms. Here is a messy example from a recent game.

Hand drawn map with interconnected tunnels and rooms

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That looks great! I've always wanted to do something similar, but the conflicting backtracks would be some sort of weird non-euclidian space. But mapping that would be hard.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

I would have Daggerfall flashbacks if I tried to map that ๐Ÿ˜…

You could do that as an alternative to finding stairs down - instead you find a gentle slope that goes under the previous tunnels, then start a new floor.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This is awesome and I highly recommend this approach. I've used something very like this in Pathfinder (1e if you're wondering) for a series of natural caverns occupied by Skum and it worked out great. I didn't so much work loot and monsters into the plan. I mostly just used it for the shape/layout of the caverns. But I can definitely see benefits to having more worked into the roll table system.

If you want certain things to happen at intervals through the dungeon or whatever, just skip rolling every 4th time they explore a little further and instead put in in what you want them to run into.

Also, when I did it, I found it worked nicely to consider the results on the roll table "suggestions". Like, if you roll 1 four times in a row, in a TTRPG situation, it could end up being like "ok, there's more hallway." "I scout ahead further." "More hallway." "Ok, further then." Mor-" "Let me guess, more hallway."

Here's the (d20) roll table I used for the aforementioned Skum dungeon if anyone's interested:

1.   
***
(straight)
2.    +
3.    U
4.    L
5.    -< (fork)
6.    -w- (water)
7.    -O
8.    -e
9.    stairs
10.    -=== (widen)
11.    converge
12.    -[s]| (secret passage at T)
13.    =-= (narrows for short distance)
14.    T
15.    --
16.    Overpass
17.    -<>-
18.    s (spiral up/down)
19.    -rubble-
20.    ---o (fake dead end)

I want to say I made a slightly improved version later for a different campaign, but I haven't been able to find it. I might search more later if I have a second.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

I love the approach of having "hard coded" rooms that happen at certain intervals. I wish I would have had this a few weeks ago when my group was exploring a cave system. I love that d20 table. I may use that for the game I'm running with my kids that is (of course) set in the Minecraft world ๐Ÿ˜„