Dungeon ideas thread


Homebrew and House Rules


There's another thread that has unique dungeon settings; that's not what I'm thinking. Just c'mon it and post your ideas. Stuck for an idea for your upcoming game? Ask for some help and maybe we can help get it done for you.

1st level dungeon

An abadaran crusader returning home with his spoils was waylaid and before the evil fey could finish him he headed into the wood. Beneath the gnarled roots of an enormous and ancient tree he made his way into underground tunnels to hide. This site became a famous shrine but over time it has been ignored and forgotten.

The party finds the shrine (insert hook here) but also finds that the shrine has a curious etching in the wall in the shape of Abadar's Key. Inserting the holy symbol or picking the lock brings the party into the dungeon, crafted in the interior of the tree.

Hidden by puzzles and protected by traps are the spoils of war the crusader was to return home with. The ground floor has been breeched by tunneling mites and their vermin. They have come to this place seeing a tome of Fey Rituals stolen 100 years ago. They intend to return the book to their queen.

The "ground floor" is actually about 10' underground and consists of a dozen or so rooms, chambers and halls venerating Abadar. The second level houses the knight's personal chambers while he was here; this area is currently the home of a bugbear torturer who enjoys tormenting the local Fey. The 3rd or Top floo is the final sanctum of the book and is guarded by a cunning death trap.


In the land of the blind...

Half buried in the sand and shale on the palid coast of the Icwynd Sea rests the head of a once magnificent colossus. Over the centuries the wind, weather and surf has eaten away at the statue's left eye, leaving a gaping hole in their wake.

Descending down, through that opening and into the grit and earth below tidal pools were followed by all manner of unnatural life that came crawling from the cursed surf. Now the flotsam congeal in the only solid rock they can find; the inside of the statue's head.

The dungeon then is a series of chambers bored into the colossus' cranium by skum spawned from an aboleth residing in the murky depths in the flooded lower halls. The place is constantly filled with the echoes of the tide obscuring all other sounds (all the PC's entering must automatically accept the Deafness condition). While this presents some challenges great rewards lay in wait for the brave fools willing to fight for it. For centuries a cloister of evil cultists has venerated the beast and pray for the time when it will fulfill whispered promises of power and deliverance to the far realms where true enlightenment can be found. They in turn have amassed and horded great wealth.

Potential hooks could be the lure of the cash or some item the cult is sitting on; the evil of the cult having gone too far and been noticed by the good forces of the land; perhaps the cult has kidnapped or brainwashed one of the NPC's important to the party.


Presently running a group through an adventure I call "the living dungeon" which is designed to create an ecosystem as much as a hindrance.

Backstory: "A few generations ago a dragon enslaved the three nearest countries, and ruled from a palace in some remote mountains, Heroes were dispatched to slay the dragon, which they did by detonating some artifact in the palace buying the entire place and causing an earthquake that ravaged the countryside....
... recently, an ranger returned from the badlands (near the old palace) with a magic item that belonged to one of those dead heroes.... evidently Hobgoblins have located the cave and are digging for the dragon hoard."

The party is dispatched to find the dig site and capture... overland travel adventure gives way to dungeon crawl

Once inside, instead of finding a 'standard' dungeon of enemies waiting to ambush the 1st thing that opens a door, they find warring factions of Orcs, Hobgoblins, and Kobolds that have each entrenched parts of the dungeon complex, to defend themselves from each other, and the truly horrible monsters that inhabit the cave system.

The party must work their way through a dynamic landscape that will change and evolve if they allow it to spend anytime where they don't exert force to control it.

Can't put spoilers in b/c some of my players are active on the board.


I am working on an idea for a demi-plane type dungeon where the party is inside the gears of a great clockwork mechanism. So the passages between gears change as the gears move. So passages open and close. Need to figure out how the gears move so I know how things change. Needs to be large enough that there is plenty to occupy the PCs for long time. Also need to create and economy and ecology for the denizens of the gears. Figure I have a community of gnomes growing a potato/bean like plant using dancing lights and illusion spells to allow the plants to grow for food. Figure the campaign is to get out of the gears.


Lore and Backstory: A empty hulking city stands in a bay. The city is a terrifying eerie site for other residents who have begun moving into the area. Scattered across the land are the remains of some ancient magi-tech civilization, but this city appears to have been the ancient peoples largest, even the capital or hub. All the roads left over from this great civilization lead into the city.

Characters are tasked by colonists to and curious alchemists, engineers and wizards to plumb the great hulking city for clues as the how much of the technology worked and can be used.

The city itself still glows with lights at night, and every six hours a terrible howling sound seems to rise up from the cities heart and across its endless well laid out streets. From a distance it appears a recent earthquake may have damaged some of the city as a bridge crossing the narrow mouth of the bay has since largely collapsed. Every day steam billows from the point where the city seems to meet the sea and odd lights and smoldering smoke rises from various intersections of the city. Keeping it in a perpetual haze, and enveloping the bay with an odd miasma that can make some people Ill (The source of various Fortitude saves).

The Nitty Gritty: The city is a massive mega-dungeon type area, one where players can explore sections and building complexes finding various aspects of the city from its local emergency power plant, the foundry, living quarters, hospital, temples and administration centers. Beneath the city burns a the stores of alchemical substances used by the ancients that cause the ground the crack in places and burst forth poison gas and smoke. Various parts of the city have ground that causes the players feat to have fire damage and they have to move quickly or their shoes could catch fire or melt.

Crawling in the city are such foes as ghosts of previous residents, undead, Living Spells, and various aberrations and Constructs built by the city builders. Also of interest is that electricity still flows around on an emergency basis causing a an alert siren to sound every six hours which causes some of the mindless undead to emerge and wander the streets before retreating after the siren ends.

GOAL: The goals vary, in that campaign it was simply to find out how the city worked. What caused the fumes and possibly to put out the subterranean fires that made the bay area uninhabitable and the city dangerous. Also to steal ancient texts and alchemical and magical texts to understand how the ancients built the place. Side quests included finding out what got rid of the ancients in the first place.


I've been kicking around an idea for a massive labyrinthine mansion for the next campaign I run, and I'm hoping it will be a pretty big brain twister for my group.

Basically, from the outside the place looks like a fairly typical, semi-grand estate - 2 stories with a cellar, stables, massive grounds, generally just too big for the family that lives there. However, once you step inside and start looking around you realize that every floor is identical(including the cellar), from the overall layout down to the view you see when looking out a particular window and the items in each room leading the party to assume that something's off with the place.

There are actually a minimum of 5 floors, and every stairwell is affected by a gate-type effect that puts you on a different floor than where you intending to go. Some of the rooms, and maybe a hallway or two, are also affected by this as well. To make matters worse none of the windows can be opened, and the exterior doors lock behind you when you enter. The only inhabitants in the place seem to be a handful of housekeeping and service automatons who are kind enough to inform you that there is no escape for thieves and intruders.

I've not yet decided on how I'm going to make it work other than that there's going to be some magic items that allow them to become immune to the illusions, traps, and other magical effects of the house. For the gate effects I was thinking of doing it so that entering certain gates in a certain order would place them in an otherwise inaccessible room/hallway that contained the stuff they needed, but I'm thinking that it might be a bit much for my particular group. The other way I was going to do it was to let them see an automaton enter a doorway or staircase and seemingly disappear, because they aren't affected by the gates, and let them figure out that if they kill the automatons(simulacra or golems) they can steal whatever it is that gives them immunity. Of course attacking one of the automatons triggers other enemies to appear, such as more automatons or even summoned elementals.

For the story hook to get them there, I figure that it can be they're sent to deliver some sort of message to the duke/archmage/whoever that lives there because he hasn't been in contact with the king/local government/conjuring school in an unusually long time. The person is either going to have died in his sleep if he's a mundane person, or he'll have screwed up some experiment that has left him imprisoned by something or trapped in a dead magic demiplane if he's a caster.


When the rulers of Karnoss became desperate enough to defeat their enemies among the tribes of the Dunevain they made terrible pacts with evil fey for lycanthropic power. The first of these was the Usurper, Lupinoszk I, the Werewolf King.

He was a cousin to the throne and was originally from the northern borderlands where his family maintained close relations with the baron of Raveneszk. Upon his coup and ascention to the throne he returned to conquer and in time all the barony became the North Province of Karnoss.

To celebrate his victory he had a castle built upon the steps now known as the Shuddering Hills. Var Kashember stood atop a narrow cliff overlooking the surrounding valley; a "summer retreat" for the weary monarch.

In time the valley came to populated by the migrating Karnossov elite. In the shadow of the castle a town arose: Falkiveg. It was an idylic town of petty nobles, freemen, and the traditions of the the Old Provinces.

Then came the Wild Hunts of the king and life around Lake Kiv became terrifying. The countryside was terrorized and for years fear and loathing mounted. Of course nothing could be done, for Lupinoszk I was their king. Eventually though it came to pass that the king's enemies from throughout Karnoss trapped him in Var Kashember and in these dark days his predations became even worse until as one the countryside rose up and slew the Werewolf King.

In time Falkiveg was sacked during the First Abadaran Crusade and burned. The surrounding valley was put to the torch and the knights even mounted the summit to explore the king's castle. Here their story ends for none returned.

Then came The Great and Terrible Shudder and with it the main structure of the castle fell into ruin. The earthquake caused the face of the valley to change and much of what was once Falkiveg was buried under the earth. Lake Kiv and its environs have flooded and regressed over time into fetid bogs and moors.

And yet this region and its infamous landmark still call to adventurers and treasure hunters alike. Some never make it past the crumbling hillside ruins on the western edge of the valley while others find more than their share of adventure among the bogs. But for those that bravely press on there is only Kashember and the horrors therein.

This is my werewolf take on Dracula. What say you?

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