This article contains affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you make purchases using these links, at no cost to you.In the dungeon stocking overhaul, we explored a technique for stocking dungeons that involves generating three features per room to make rooms more interesting and complex. You get a trio of features like NPC, hazard, information then your task is to create those elements and stitch them together.
I’ve got something that can help provide more structure for you to do that. But first…
The Murkdice Mork Borg Minimalist Mini-Megadungeon Month 2025 (6M-2025) is launching next week! We’ll be using Murkdice’s ‘patchwork megadungeon’ technique (see here) to take community created dungeons, cut them apart, and form one larger interconnected dungeon.
To find out more, get the starting materials and join our discord server.
Graph Theory
What you see below is all the possible graphs of three points with directed connections. What? In short, these are all the ways you can connect three dots where the connections have a direction.
Why do we care about this?
This gives you an exhaustive list of all the ways the three features of your room can be connected, where the direction of the arrow indicates which feature affects which. It could be a hazard affecting an opportunity: that could mean the hazard blocks the opportunity. Let’s look at examples from the chart to make things clear.
Two arrows between two features indicates they are affecting each other, like two monsters fighting.
Graph 5: Two of the features affect the other one but not each other.
Graph 12: One feature affects the other two, and the other two both affect each other.
How to pick
Roll 1d12 + 1d4. Why? First, it prevents us getting a 1, since the point here is to have at least some connections.
But the probability distribution of 1d12 + 1d4 (courtsey of AnyDice) tells the story here (result on the x-axis, likehood on the y-axis).
This die roll tapers off the chances of getting the most simple and most complex connections. That way you don’t get the most complex rooms too often or simplest rooms either.
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Example
Using the dungeon stocking overhaul, we roll 3d6 and get hazard (H), NPC (N), information (I). Note these as nodes.
Now roll 1d12 + 1d4. 6. Reference the chart. We connect the nodes.
Now we know the hazard is affecting the NPC, and the NPC has a piece of information. Easy option: NPC is trapped by a hazard and has information to share if rescued.
This gives you an outline to populate the room.
Recommendation
The Dragonbane community is becoming an engine of 3rd party content. A neat one-page adventure, Invasion in Wrystham, caught my eye (it’s mapless and I’m interested in one page adventures that don’t rely on classic dungeon structure).
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I’ve definitely had dungeon room structure theory on the brain. This is a step forward!
I love any attempt to map something like this in its entirety