Dungeon Crawling is tracked in rooms. Clearing a room in a dungeon crawl takes 10 minutes. This entails carefully performing tasks and searching around.
After entering a room and resolving any immediate danger such as a combat or trap, the players each choose how they’d like to help ‘clear’ the room. This means selecting an exploration activity:
- Cover Tracks: Use a relevant skill (Survival/Naturecraft etc) to hide your parties presence after moving on. You leave the room in a state that would not spark suspicion to those passing through, that you had been there. On a successful check, you do not increase the Dungeon Roll by d6 for this room. This Exploration Activity cannot be taken if another character took the Loot, Search or Interact Activities.
- Divine: A character capable of magic can spend the 10 minutes peering into the future. When performing the Dungeon Roll, roll twice and take the ‘safer’ result, as determined by the GM.
- Interact: You spend the 10 minutes interacting with the environment of the room. This could be to clear a blockage, read through dusty tomes, learn the history of ancient relics, or anything else specific to the rooms context. At the GM’s discretion, it might take longer than 10 minutes to Interact, or be possible for multiple characters to Interact. In most circumstances, you will be asked to make a skill check to achieve something from Interacting, such as a STR-based check to clear rubble, or a INT-based check to find clues in a scroll.
- Keep Watch: You keep an eye and an ear on any adjacent rooms, staying aware of incoming threats. Upon a successful Perception-based skill check, your party cannot be surprised by incoming attacks. If you roll a combat encounter on the Dungeon Roll, your party can position themselves freely within the room and perform one pre-combat buff, such as a spell or potion.
- Loot: You loot all the obvious gear and valuables you would like the take from the room. No check needed.
- Scout: Using either a Stealth or Perception-based skill check, you may gain an understanding of what lies beyond one of the adjoining doors. This will typically include if there are creatures beyond the door, or if not, a brief summery of what the room might be. For example: You hear no movement beyond the door so peak through the smallest of cracks. Beyond seems to be a messy library. Actionable, but intentionally vague information.
- Search: Using either an Investigation or Perception-based skill check, you attempt to find anything hidden within the room. This might be hidden doors, secret treasure, or prying eyes.
- Help Out: If the system you’re playing includes an advantage system, you can help out to provide the relevant form advantage to one of the other characters.
- Double Down: If you have performed any of the other Exploration Activities in this list and failed to succeed at the activity, you can spend another 10 minutes to automatically succeed. This adds an additional d6 to the Dungeon Roll.
The Dungeon Roll
After every room has been ‘cleared’, the GM chooses a player to roll the Dungeon Roll. This begins at a d6 and increases by 1d6 after every cleared room. At the discretion of the GM, the party being particularly noisy or rushing may also add a d6 to the Dungeon Roll.
In the event that a combat encounter is rolled, the Dungeon Roll resets to 1d6.
Taking a significant rest within the dungeon (anything that allows for the (non-spell/potion) replenishment of HP or resources) triggers a Dungeon Roll with an additional 2d6, but then the Dungeon Roll resets to 1d6.
The Dungeon Roll Table is a long table that contains a variety of potential encounters. It is structured to allow a ‘cooldown’ period and then slowly ramps up. The longer the players ‘get lucky’ and avoid a fight, the more dice they roll and the more likely something nasty shows up.
The best length for this table is 78, following the following rules:
1 – 12 (2d6): Nothing.
This is your cooldown. At the beginning of the dungeon it will build tension and after a combat or rest, it gives the party time to breathe.
13 – 24 (4d6): Suspense.
During this period, add 2 or 3 non-combat results per d6, that build upon your lore and create suspense. Maybe they hear goblin drums banging in the distance or frightened fleeing rats rush through the room from deeper within.
25 – 42 (7d6): Potential for attacks.
You can now start adding some small combat encounters along with some skill encounters. Maybe a hunting party of tired goblins returns, or maybe the ground splits open as hostile plants try to bind anything in the room. Don’t fill every slot yet. 4 or 5 of the d6’s results aren’t combats so will leave room for the dice to potentially escalate further!
And remember, dice are swingy and we want that! A roll of 7d6 could result in a 10, which will be nothing but it allows the dice to scale even higher! Getting low rolls with big handfuls of dice will be really fun for your players as things keep escalating. They might roll low for now, saving themselves from encounters but as the number of dice climb higher, the potential for your nastiest encounters becomes stronger!
43 – 60 (10d6): Danger and Intrigue.
Start filling out 5 or 6 of the slots, with about half being medium difficulty encounters. A hungry ogre wandering in search of food might get scent of you party and decide they’re dinner. For the other slots, these should start building mystery or might even be rewarding! Having built the dice number this high is worthy of praise. Add some mini, quickly resolved side plots or NPCs that can be spoken too. Maybe a captured halfling escaped and begs the party for help. His capturers are hunting him and he’ll reward them if he lives!
61 – 78(13d6): The Best and the Worst.
Start filling out every slot with either a nasty fight or a flavourful, rewarding situation. If the party have gone through this many rooms without a rest, either they’re desperate or crazy. Maybe the final boss of the dungeon sent his strongest lieutenant to see what happened to his minions. Or maybe, a benevolent ghost seeks revenge against the evil here and heals the party. I would always reserve the 78 slot, the final slot, the flawless dungeon run slot, to be a huge boon. A place to safely long rest while pausing time, or a legendary piece of loot, or even a powerful ally to clear the remainder of the dungeon with them. I mean let’s be real, the odds of rolling a perfect 78 are 1 in 12,027,198,412.7. You can go crazy and it’ll never ever come up… probably.
It goes without saying that this is obvious a very prep-intensive system. If you don’t enjoy the process of writing, designing and creating, this is probably not the dungeon system for you.
It also goes without saying that this should be scaled to your dungeon! If your dungeon only has 6 rooms, ignore the above advisements! Roll d4 instead, make 1-4 nothing, 5-8 something small and rare, 9-12 something a little scary, and 13-16 the bad stuff! Make your game your own!
Example Dungeon Roll Chart: The Sunless Citadel
Here is an example Dungeon Roll Chart I created for the Sunless Citadel module. I was running Nimble for this adventure but I have kept it purposely vague and system agnostic. You might just have to find similarly levelled enemies for whatever system you’re running.
| 6d6 | Result | Phase |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | All is quiet… | Cooldown |
| 2 | All is quiet… | |
| 3 | All is quiet… | |
| 4 | All is quiet… | |
| 5 | All is quiet… | |
| 6 | All is quiet… | |
| 7 | All is quiet… | |
| 8 | All is quiet… | |
| 9 | All is quiet… | |
| 10 | All is quiet… | |
| 11 | All is quiet… | |
| 12 | All is quiet… | |
| 13 | All is quiet… | Suspense |
| 14 | Drums in the deep: The party hear the sounds of drums deeper in the dungeon. The goblins are preparing to attack the kobolds. This continues for 4 rooms or until the party reach Goblinville (40). | |
| 15 | All is quiet… | |
| 16 | Vines that have long grown along the walls and ceiling suddenly retract, pulling into walls with a eery creaking sound. | |
| 17 | All is quiet… | |
| 18 | All is quiet… | |
| 19 | All is quiet… | |
| 20 | The door suddenly bursts open with a terrified scream. A lone kobold, covering in rats stumbles through the door and thrashes wildly. Mere moments later, it falls dead as the swarm of rats feasts on its body. After eating their fill, they scurry in the direction of ‘Guthash the Mother Rat’. | |
| 21 | All is quiet… | |
| 22 | All is quiet… | |
| 23 | The party hear sudden laughing and fighting in a nearby room. It lasts for just a few short minutes and then goes quiet. Depending whether they are in the Kobold or Goblin territory, they find the recently dead corpse of the other faction in the next unexplored room. | |
| 24 | All is quiet… | |
| 25 | COMBAT: 1d4 Goblins OR kobolds. Minion tier. A scouting party on its way to test the other factions defences. | Potential for attacks |
| 26 | All is quiet… | |
| 27 | SKILL TEST: Vines emerge from the walls and thrash wildly. Party must make DEX-based saves or be grappled and pinned to the walls. Grappled party members take 1 damage for each round they remain pinned. | |
| 28 | COMBAT: 2 Rat Swarms rush the party. While fighting, they also seem to be trying to drag the party in the direction of ‘Guthash the Mother Rat’. | |
| 29 | All is quiet… | |
| 30 | SKILL TEST: If Jot the Quasit is still alive, he pulls over a large piece of terrain onto a party member and then flees. PC must succeed a DEX-based save or take 2 damage and the noise increases the Dungeon Roll by 1d6. | |
| 31 | COMBAT: 1d4 regular Goblins OR kobolds, plus 2 Minion tier Goblins OR kobolds. A hunting party returns with dead giant rats on spears. | |
| 32 | COMBAT: 1d4+2 Twig Blights grow from the walls and attack the party. | |
| 33 | All is quiet… | |
| 34 | All is quiet… | |
| 35 | SKILL TEST: The half-formed ghost of Karakas the ranger appears before the party. Perception-based Skill Check. They babble wildly about a ‘Queen of Rats’ in the eastern corridors. He then screams and dissipated. If the party has already killed ‘Guthash the Mother Rat’, he instead mumbles about the rotten druid below. | |
| 36 | A small force of Goblins OR Kobolds shift rooms. The nearest collection of enemies move to an adjacent room, nearer to the party if possible but never into their current room. If they move into the adjacent room and the party Scouted, both the party and the enemy enter the room at the same time and both seem equally surprised. | |
| 37 | All is quiet… | |
| 38 | All is quiet… | |
| 39 | COMBAT: 1 Rat Swarm and 2 Giant Rats attack the party. They seem starved and all focus on a single PC. | |
| 40 | SKILL TEST: A lone Goblin OR Kobold enters the room and freezes upon seeing the party. The party must use relevant Skill checks to stop the enemy from calling to their allies. Typical approaches would be a DEX-based check to quickly silence them or a CHA-based check to talk them down. Failure adds an additional d6 to the Dungeon Roll. | |
| 41 | SKILL TEST: Vines begin to slowly grow from the walls and feel around the air. The party must make Stealth-based checks to avoid touching the vines. In any character fails, the vines immediately retract at speed and increase the Dungeon Roll by a d6. | |
| 42 | COMBAT: 1 Goblin OR Kobold rushes through, fleeing from 3 Stirge swarm. Both the Goblin OR Kobold and the Stirge attack the party. | |
| 43 | COMBAT: 4 Hobgoblins or 4 equally powerful enemies. They are an elite squad, hunting creatures of the other faction. | Danger and Intrigue |
| 44 | All is quiet… | |
| 45 | SKILL TEST: A bold but foolish treasure hunter enters the room from a previously cleared room. They are immediately revealed as being unfit for this dungeon. The party will need to use CHA-based checks to convince them of the danger. Success has the NPC leaving, but offering the party his now un-needed supplies. (Rations, torches, 1 health potion). | |
| 46 | COMBAT: If ‘Guthash the Mother Rat’ is still alive, she attacks the party with 2 Giant Rats. At low health she retreats to her nest (30). If ‘Guthash the Mother Rat’ has already been killed, 4 Rat Swarms attack instead and fight to the death. | |
| 47 | COMBAT: 1 Mimic. The party suddenly notice a piece of furniture that wasn’t there before. If the party check it out, the mimic attacks. If the party doesn’t trigger this combat, it doesn’t reset the Dungeon Roll dice. | |
| 48 | SIDE QUEST: The party find a letter as they’re about to move on. It’s a hastily scribbled message to whoever finds it, asking the party to get their ring back and return it to the church in Oakhurst. Each killed goblin has a 1 in 8 chance of having the ring. Returning it to the church rewards them with 2 scrolls of Heal spells, or similar restoration-based item. | |
| 49 | COMBAT: 1 lvl 2 Plant-based creature (Tangler) and 3 Twig Blights attack. They grow from the ceiling and walls and attack. The Gulthias Tree is trying to protect itself. | |
| 50 | SIDE QUEST: A pitiful kobold named Dipple enters the room. He asks the party to save his brother Piddle, who has been taken by the Goblins. Piddle is being held in the Goblin Stockade (34). Safely returning him has Dipple offer them his ‘Lucky Button’ (Button of Protection – Nimble). | |
| 51 | All is quiet… | |
| 52 | COMBAT: 1 Ettercap OR other lvl 4 underground creature. This ambush predator attacks once the party prepare to enter the next room. | |
| 53 | COMBAT: 1d4+4 regular Goblins OR kobolds, plus 4 Minion tier Goblins OR kobolds. This war party is planning to raid the other faction. | |
| 54 | SKILL TEST: In the following room, alongside any predetermined encounters, a human woman sits against the wall. She is coated in woody roots that bury into her flesh. She is mentally absent and quietly mutters in a coded language. The party can attempt to parse what she’s saying with an INT-based skill check. Success reveals she is speaking of a tree of unmatched evil deep below. Trying to remove the roots from the woman kills her. A Medicine-based skill check reveals she is long dead but the roots keep her corpse in a loop. | |
| 55 | SIDE QUEST: The party find a series of panicked, scribbled notes from the missing Elf scholar. They speak about a terrible cursed tree and a mysterious druid that’s claimed his companions. He’s fleeing to the surface. He hopes he will make it. | |
| 56 | All is quiet… | |
| 57 | COMBAT: The party get caught in a major skirmish between the Goblin and Kobold factions. 2d6 Goblins and 2d6 Kobolds suddenly burst into the room from different doors and attack each other. The party might have joined a faction but in the chaos of war, the friendly faction might accidentally swing at anyone stood to close. | |
| 58 | COMBAT: 2 lvl 2 Plant-based creatures (Tangler) attack. They rapidly sprout from the ground and then attack. | |
| 59 | SKILL TEST: The room erupts with roots and vines that quickly grow to block the exits. Strange flowers bloom and begin spraying poisonous pollen. The party must succeed STR-based skill checks to break away the roots before they become poisoned. | |
| 60 | COMBAT: 2 Hobgoblins and 4 regular Goblin attack. They are heading out to ambush the roads but met the party first. | |
| 61 | COMBAT: 3 lvl 2 Plant-based creatures (Tangler) attack. They rapidly sprout from the ground and then attack. | The Best and the Worst |
| 62 | BOON: As the party leave the room a stone in the ground becomes dislodges and reveals 2 Healing Potions. | |
| 63 | COMBAT: The party get caught in a major skirmish between the Goblin and Kobold factions. 3d6 Goblins and 3d6 Kobolds suddenly burst into the room from different doors and attack each other. The party might have joined a faction but in the chaos of war, the friendly faction might accidentally swing at anyone stood to close. | |
| 64 | BOON: A goblin rushes into the room holding a large sack. They’re glancing back and trip, breaking their neck and spilling 6d4 x 10 gp across the room. | |
| 65 | COMBAT: 2d4+4 regular Goblins OR kobolds, plus 6 Minion tier Goblins OR kobolds. This war party is planning to raid the other faction. | |
| 66 | BOON: A group of 4 kobolds approach the party and ask to help. The party gains 4 Kobold minions that fight until dead. | |
| 67 | COMBAT: 3 Hobgoblins and 5 regular Goblin attack. They are heading out to ambush the roads but met the party first. | |
| 68 | BOON: A mysterious stranger arrives in a long leather jacket. The party can buy consumables from them. He then leaves with no further explanation. “Whatcha buyin?” | |
| 69 | COMBAT: 2 lvl 2 Plant-based creature (Tangler) and 5 Twig Blights attack. They grow from the ceiling and walls and attack. The Gulthias Tree is trying to protect itself. | |
| 70 | BOON: The party identify a group of mushrooms as being excellent magical enhancers. The party gain 2d4 Temp HP. | |
| 71 | COMBAT: 2d4+4 regular Goblins OR kobolds, plus 6 Minion tier Goblins OR kobolds. This war party is planning to raid the other faction. | |
| 72 | BOON: Magical liquid drips from the ceiling. It falls on the party like rain. Each player rolls 1 of their hit dice without expending it. | |
| 73 | COMBAT: 4 Hobgoblins and 6 regular Goblin attack. They are heading out to ambush the roads but met the party first. | |
| 74 | BOON: The party find an ancient fallen hero with enchanted leather straps. Each player can wear a strap and gain +2 Armour until they Long Rest. | |
| 75 | COMBAT: 3 lvl 2 Plant-based creature (Tangler) and 5 Twig Blights attack. They grow from the ceiling and walls and attack. The Gulthias Tree is trying to protect itself. | |
| 76 | BOON: The ghost of a fallen hero appears before the party and offers them each a blessing. Each hero may choose a Major Boon/Feat that lasts until they long rest. | |
| 77 | COMBAT: Durnn and his entourage have heard the trouble the party are causing and have sought them out. They fight until one side begins losing and either laughs as the party retreats, or flees back to his base himself. | |
| 78 | BOON: A vine grows from the ceiling and grows a single perfect fruit. The fruit shines with golden light. Each player fully heals as though taking a long rest. |
Depending on your love for prep, or the faction diversity on your dungeon, you can approach the creation of this chart in two ways. Either fill out each slot with a specific encounter like I’ve done above, or mark down something as being an encounter but prepare a separate encounter list. The advantage of the second variation is you can adapt the combat to suit whatever factions territory you’re in.
The advantage I like with this system is that is it’s engaging for the players, as they enjoy rolling bigger and bigger handfuls of dice, it creates a cinematic build up of tension as each safe room makes the next potentially scarier, and it’s system agnostic. You could run this dungeon system for any game.
Give this a try for your next dungeon crawl or hex crawl and let me know how it goes!
Veneon Reforged 
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