For my second GenCon game, I need a dungeon. Not the generic “dungeon” as in a set of encounters for the PC – no, a real stone walls, spike the doors, 10 foot room dungeon. Part of the premise for the game is that your group makes these dungeons for the big bads, and now you have to “fix” one. So the first thing I need is the original and then I get to “break” it.

The first question is background. I know I want to make this as “old school” as possible, but I still want to have a reason, history, and backstory for why the dungeon exists. And no, I’m not going to tell you – come to GenCon and play or wait till after and I will post details.

Next is size of the dungeon. Time constraints mean size constraints. Three and a half hours puts a limit on the number of rooms and areas that can be explored. I normally go into a Con game with five or six encounters besides the opening and closing. This gives me some flexibility in placement and lets me stretch to fill when (inevitably) the party circumvents an encounter I thought would take 30 minutes in three minutes.

If I think of encounters as rooms or areas, that further defines the size and scope of my dungeon, something like this:

• Opening scene – call to action
• Discovery 1
• Discovery 2
• Discovery 3
• Advantage or Twist 1
• Threat – plot thickens
• Betrayal or secrets
• Closing – battle with the big bad

By no means do the middle points need to go in any specific order. I will always have an idea of how they should go. Chucking that idea is normally the first thing that happens.

You will notice that the labels are pretty generic. Two reasons for this. First, mix and match as desired – make extra for your players. Especially at a Con game, you will have different tastes for what the players want from their adventure. No matter what I put as the game description, six players normally means six different sets of expectations. Second, I haven’t written enough of the encounters yet to be specific for myself.

I normally draw the dungeon last. Besides often being the most fun, it will change the way you think about the encounters and how they relate. Putting two encounters next to each other on a map means the PCs will probably end up doing them both. There are also lots of issues with space, and having something mapped out in my head is always different once it hits the graph paper.

I can almost guarantee that once you start drawing you will go back and update encounters – I know that I will be.

This will be my fun over the next couple weeks. I’ll let you know how it goes.