Handful-of-Dice Adventure - The Dungeon

The handful-of-dice adventure

Take a handful of dice, one of each size, roll them, and generate an adventure hook. That is the premise of the handful-of-dice method presented here in order to build a dungeon for your D&D game. Roll a d4, a d6, a d8, a d10, a d12, and a d20, compare the results to the following tables, and you will have a solid starting point for building a unique adventure.

The following handful-of-dice tables generate the basis for a dungeon adventure. Roll a handful of dice, one of each kind, fill out some of the details, and you are set to run a fun dungeon crawl for your players.

Handful-of-dice — Dungeon tables

The Character Quest table provides four unique quest hooks to give characters a motivation to enter the dungeon.

d4	Character Quest
1	Retrieve the cursed amulet of an ancient witch queen.
2	Destroy an archway that connects to a previously unknown plane of existence.
3	Assassinate the leader of a ritual suicide cult.
4	Rescue the son of a corrupted noble family.

The Boss table provides six bosses which the characters might face at the climax of the dungeon crawl. These villains rule over the dungeon and its inhabitants. Choose an appropriate stat block to create a fun challenge for the characters at their current level. For example, the “rabid beast of legend” might be a dire wolf for a 1st-level party but you might decide that it is a purple worm for a party of 9th level.

d6	Boss
1	A scheming demon who guards an ancient secret of his masters.
2	An undying sorceress posing as the damsel in distress.
3	A rabid beast of legend driven into a blood-frenzy.
4	An eccentric elvish warlord trying to make a home for his ruthless half-elf-half-orc warband.
5	The tentacled offspring of the mind of a Great Old One — an unfathomable being of vast deviant intellect.
6	A fallen angel settling an ancient debt with a powerful celestial.

The Minions table contains eight groups of creatures which serve the boss. You can roll multiple times on this table to create multiple factions within the dungeon. Similar to the Boss table, choose stat blocks appropriate for the party’s level.

d8	Minions
1	Loyal cultists
2	Mad scientists
3	Raging beasts
4	Elite mercenaries
5	Bound elementals
6	Mischievous demons
7	Zealous orcs
8	Corrupted dragonborn

The Rival party table shows ten groups of creatures which might crawl through the dungeon simultaneously with the player characters. They might be trying to thwart the party’s success, or try to complete the quest before the party. You can throw in an encounter with the rival party when you want to add an extra complication to the dungeon crawl.

d10	Rival Party
1	Disgruntled devils
2	Idealistic adventurers
3	Corrupt paladins
4	Sadistic nobles
5	Relentless oracles
6	Confused priests
7	Greedy archaeologists
8	Arrogant monster hunters
9	Insane conjurers
10	Ambitious orphans

The Dungeon theme table gives twelve types of thematic flavor to help you describe the general atmosphere of the dungeon. The entries also provide a starting point to flesh out individual chambers within the dungeon.

d12	Dungeon theme
1	Unholy swamp
2	Mystical pyramid
3	Festering mage’s tower
4	Floating obelisk network
5	Glowing jungle ruins
6	Celestial crypt
7	Haunted seas
8	Surreal wasteland
9	Undead keep
10	Macabre mansion
11	Oozing mines
12	Forsaken museum

The Hazard table contains twenty possible hazards that make navigating the dungeon treacherous for the player characters. If needed, you can improvise the mechanics for these hazards by using these tables from the Basic Rules. Generate a series of hazards by rolling multiple d20s.

d20	Hazard
1	Crumbling structures
2	Animated statues
3	Flying scythes
4	Swarms of insects
5	Acid pools
6	Falling meteors
7	Poisonous explosives
8	Corrupting arcane circles
9	Spectral cage traps
10	Parasitic invasions
11	Living fireballs
12	Shifting geography
13	Psionic crystals
14	Giant spider webs
15	Primordial skeletons
16	Corrupted springs
17	Unstable portals
18	Lethal vapors
19	Living portraits
20	Sewer floods

Example dungeon adventure seeds

The following adventure seeds have been generated using the handful-of-dice tables above.

Characters must retrieve the cursed amulet of an ancient witch queen. An undying sorceress posing as the damsel in distress guards the amulet together with her bound elementals. A rival group of idealistic adventurers tries to save the sorceress. Within the giant spider webs of the dungeon, parasitic invasions threaten to kill the characters before they reach the amulet.

Characters must rescue the son of a corrupted noble family from the clutches of the tentacled offspring of the mind of a Great Old One — an unfathomable being of vast deviant intellect. Mischievous demons serve this aberration, but disgruntled devils seek to destroy them. In the macabre mansion where the son is hidden, living fireballs roam the halls.

With the Monster Manual, a few useful random tables to improvise statistics, and potentially a map from Dyson’s Map Archive, we can run a fun dungeon adventure generated by rolling a handful of dice.