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My players and I are taking a break from our campaign that's been running since late July. I'm leaving the country Sunday, and didn't have time to get everything ready for our weekly game. We'd still like to play, though, and our campaign is pretty serious, so something more light-hearted and easy was desired. Someone suggested I ad-lib an endless dungeon, starting at level one, and see how far the PCs can make it (leveling up along the way). I love the idea.
My questions are these: How should I prepare myself for this? What tables, books, and other things should I have ready? Does anyone have any ideas for the actual structure of the dungeon? It need not be sensible or realistic, just fun.
If it doesn't have to make sense, then just go grab a piece of graph paper and a pencil. Once pencil hits paper your 3rd grade doodling skills will come back and bam; instant dungeon. It'll look like a schematic, but that's a level right there.
If you're looking for stuff to randomly gen rooms the Gamemaster's guid for PF is a good place to start. Also cruise old Dungeon magazines for either Maps of Mystery or maps from adventures. Finally there's 2 other spots I use and they're very old school:
The 1e DM's guide for AD&D: there is a sometimes non-sensical set of random dungeon generators in the back of the book, as well as random terrain generators per hex on a map but that's not what you're asking about. Anyway, it has a LOT of tables: room and room size, hallway direction, even random treasure containers. It is thanks to that last table that my game got it's most memorable 1st level fight when kobolds took funerary urns in a crypt, filled some with treasure and others with alchemical fire and left them out in the open with the first treasure one open. The party enters, pulls a classic RPG move and begins smashing the sealed urns for treasure (alerting the kobolds); one blows up on the smasher and at the same time another comes rolling down the hall at them to explode on their legs - the barbarian jumps it mario style and charges...
Ok, back to the advice
Jonn Four's 5 Room Dungeons: this isn't a random generator so much as an inspiring concept area. No, I don't always include every sensible room in a dungeon (where do the goblins go number 2, or where are all the lady goblins?) but I do try to have some semblence of order. So I take some inspiration from the 5-room dungeons and try to build little vignettes throughout. Even in a megadungeon you might have a collection of rooms and chambers that combine for a little mini-story. Ex: you enter a hall of columns and arches with a forest theme and some evil fey. The next room has a central "tree" collumn of massive proportions and a sylvan scene on the walls that forces you to want to join thier insane revelry. Room 3 is a bridge over a chasm guarded by fey spirits you can either bluff or fight. Room 4 past the bridge is actually a massive prison cell (party doesn't realize till they're locked in) containing a Forlarren Barbarian who goes nuts on the party. The final room isn't a place but rather a portal that opens up after the Forlarren is destroyed; out steps the ghost of a dryad (the creature's slain mother) who thanks the party for releasing her child's spirit from this endless torture and rewards them by not only returning them to the "tree" room but also imparts some small treasures in the hollow of the tree.