Ready to Pointcrawl?
How I prepare a pointcrawl dungeon
This article contains affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you make purchases using these links, at no cost to you.Last week, I talked about my love of pointcrawl dungeons. Let’s talk about how I begin to prep them. Next week how I run them (here).
Start with a simple draft
I get drawing from the offset. With pen in hand, I’m either:
Picturing the location, with my concept of the space leading my drawing.
Or doodling an interesting network.
Keep it simple here. I’m drawing solid lines and boxes. Boxes for rooms, lines for paths. I mark exterior entrances if needed.
I include:
Dead ends: Can be a great source of tension and contribute to a more ‘real’ feeling location.
Loops: Give a feeling of connectivity. Players go “Ah! We’ve been here before”.
Directional choices: (i) Giving players directional choice gives them agency. (ii) Limiting choices, a single path forward with no alternative, creates a sense of dread. I use both (i) and (ii) to keep the layout fresh.
We often think of these notions with dungeon crawling games like Mork Borg, but in horror games like Call of Cthulhu it’s perhaps even more important.
Room Keys
I usually have a theme before I start the map, e.g. corrupted temple. Now I need to fill the rooms with that theme. So I write ‘room keys’, concise notes that describe the room. Let’s look at room 4.
I start with a concept/name, in this case, the Ward. I write some description.
4: The Ward
A small treatment room. Broken beds, cabinets of rotten bandages, spoilt medicines.
Next, I work out:
Size?: I distinguish between ‘regular’ and ‘large’ rooms. Large rooms are shaded in. Rooms being regular or large affects gameplay - discussed next week.
Locked?: Is the room locked? I’ll assign a difficulty to the lock once I know why the room is locked.
Secret passages?: I’m not mad for secret passages. After I’ve written the rooms, I throw a couple of secret passages in if there’s a good reason for them to be there. Secret passages are dotted lines.
Vertical connections?: I connect rooms between levels (usually at least a couple). Should this room have a vertical path? I mark vertical paths as dashed lines.
I note the room’s size and whether it’s locked.
4: The Ward (unlocked, regular)
A small treatment room. Broken beds, cabinets of rotten bandages, spoilt medicines.
Sometimes I add more, but there’s enough here for me to improvise and answer player questions. I can imagine what characters can see and smell etc.
Then I write down ‘features’, which are interactive things.
Alchemical prep station: could be used to make herbal remedies.
Wraith: Hiding in the walls. Waits for an unsuspecting victim.
Often, this is enough for me, though more complex features have further description if I think of them ahead of time. I might just improvise.
Doors/Corridors
Sometimes I write descriptions of doors. Should I want to improvise, I use the room’s contents inspire me e.g. a dining hall should have grand doors.
Besides vertical paths, I never prepare descriptions of paths between rooms ahead of time. I use the doors and the nature of the two rooms to improvise the description e.g. massive double height doors = a spacious corridor.
That’s it
Yup, that’s basically my prep of the ‘static’ parts of a pointcrawl dungeon. Some rooms get more complicated than The Ward, but plenty don’t. I’ve left some bits out, factions, foes, but those are other topics really. For the bones of prepping a pointcrawl dungeon, this is my approach. It’s light and flexible, just how I like it.
Next week we’ll talk about how I run this in-session, stuff like taking turns and encounters.
If you are looking for a nice notebook to draw pointcrawls in check out my hexbooks, notebooks designed for GMs running hexcrawls and mapping dungeons.
RELEASE ALERT: The Sanguine Siren - Death in Space / OSR
This week I launched a Death in Space scenario, The Sanguine Siren. It’s about a backwater sci-fi casino with a cheating patron. Players are tasked with identifying the cheater from a roster of shady suspects. I got to work with cartographer Jog Brogzin on this one. It’s got an OSR conversion kit as well!
Recommendations
YouTube: I checked out Questing Beast’s review of Willow by Lazy Litch. It’s a product that’s been out for a while but looks like a very cool OSR mini sandbox. Check it out.
Blog: Ben Robbins put out a neat article on whether in a West Marches game you should tell your players where the dungeons are. The structure he pitched was really interesting, and is something I think can be applied to all kinds of player information.