The Ultimate Dungeon Creator

[Wizardawn]

Well, I am finally able to release the "Ultimate Dungeon Creator" today. This is just an orgy of randomness that will make a much more detailed dungeon than any of the previous tools I have made. This was created with inspiration from the Random Settlement Generators that I have made, where I wanted many of the mundane details worked out ahead of time...and randomly. If you go to the Fantasy Tools (click the banner below) section you will find the "Ultimate Dungeon Creator"...where you can go ahead and create yourself a very quick dungeon with map, contents, traps, containers, monsters, and atmosphere. The dungeon will be very unique every time you make one. Weapons and armor will have unique appearances and names, potions will have random bottles and tastes, containers will have random odds and ends, dressers will have random clothing, artifacts will be uniquely named. Traps are dynamically generated with variable levels of deadliness. Unlike other generators here, this does not require a data file. It has over 500 creatures from myth and legends...along with real creatures both current and extinct. As time goes on...and inspiration hits...I will continue to add new traps, items, and monsters. Maybe there are more "ultimate" dungeon creators out there...but this is my attempt. It is generic as to be used with many older fantasy games.

http://www.wizardawn.com

[Lord Kilgore]

Wow.

[Wizardawn]

Today is a great addition to the Ultimate Dungeon Creator. There are some things we all want to have appear in our old school dungeons that I could not leave them out for very long. There is now a choice for "unusual items" where you can set a percent chance that one of these items will appear in an area...

Altars - appear with random construction and may include something on top of the altar. They may have magical properties when touched or used.

Idols/Statues - these come in various materials and forms. They may be dangerous or provide a magical benefit.

Fountains/Pools - are constructed with various materials, sizes, and shapes. They may be empty, filled with water, or have some other odd liquid in them. They may have some magical fluid in them that can help, or hurt, an adventurer.

Wizard Floor Symbols - are made from dirt, sand, or ash...to name a couple. They come in various shapes and may have something lying about in the shape. Entering them can be a benefit or a health risk.

Not every item will do something unusual. They may simply exist and do nothing else extra. We don't want all of the players assuming a weird fountain is "always" magical in nature so the Ultimate Dungeon Creator can always keep them guessing. Although you can set this at 100% to appear in an area, they should be much farther between for good dungeon design. They will add a great flavor to the standard dungeon environment.

[Blood axe]

Sounds great. When do you expect it to be ready? Can we see a few rooms created randomly?

[Wizardawn]

Sounds great. When do you expect it to be ready? Can we see a few rooms created randomly?

Umm...it has been up and running for about a week now (read the top post). I am just posting that I added extra features to the tool.

[Blood axe]

Sorry. I'm reading on my cell phone at work. Thecsmall print is killer.

[DarkwoodTower]

wow, awesome project. Can I contact you privately about using this product for module designs?

[Wizardawn]

wow, awesome project. Can I contact you privately about using this product for module designs?

I guess...it really just makes dungeon crawls and not "module" story material.

[Wizardawn]

Quite of few changes to the Ultimate Dungeon Creator to update on...

There have been a ton of magic item cleanup going on. When I first released the Ultimate Dungeon Creator I simply listed some magic items to appear in the loot. I am not talking about the weapons, armor, rings, wands, and such...I am talking about the relics or artifacts I have appearing. I am quite happy with the prior, but I wanted to expand the "randomness" of the relics. I didn't want to settle for a simple "Flute of Fear" type magic item, but instead wanted to randomly generate a...

Xormar's Wondrous Harp {causes fear within 30' from the musician}

...or...

Gram's Pipes {causes fear within 50' from the musician}

...with also varying types of abilities per result. Some of the things I have organized are...

Boots
Books
Cloaks
Robes
Gloves
Amulets
Helms & Hats
Belts
Musical Instruments

...which turned out pretty good. Boot are made with varying colors and leather types. Cloaks and robes come in different colors. Amulets may appear as amulets, necklaces, or medallions. Gloves may be metal gauntlets, leather gloves, or colored cloth gloves. Many of these have random sets of power so even though you may find a Belt of Strength...one may find one with +1 or one may find one with +3. Some items need a "magic word" to activate it (like some other magic items generated here) and those are maybe etched or stitched on the item...or maybe can only be learned with identifying magic.

Another bi-product of this work is that fact that these generated magic items are being described in the text of the generated dungeon output. I have run an adventure using the Ultimate Dungeon Creator and it is very convenient to know what the magic item does without having to grab my game books to look it up. Because these items have different descriptions, it is easier to sort it out later when the group gets the stuff identified at the nearby city. Gone are the days of "we found 3 long swords...are any of them magical?" Now they can tell me the exact sword they are trying to figure out (the silver long sword with the manticore leather grip...and the word 'Herux' engraved on the hilt). Because the Ultimate Dungeon Creator lists every magic item at the end of the output (and not just in the area section) in alphabetical order, I can quickly look it up. The "magic words" are a very fun aspect I am finding as well. If my players find a cloak with a word stitched on it, they are quick to put it on and say the word to see what happens.

With all this said, I must warn that "curses" are peppered into almost every type of item. Just like many games we play, there is a small percent chance a cursed item will appear. Just like the weapons, armor, rings, and such...there are possibly cursed boots, robes, cloaks, etc. So even though my players are quick to try an item, they may turn blue, become blind, turn into a toad, or even die. It always seems to be a toss up about waiting for a return trip to a city or trying an item out...even though you have a wizard who used all of their spells for battles and has none left to magically identify stuff.

One bug fix was the LOW setting for the LOOT was not working properly...so it seems to be behaving now. I changed some of the default settings to what I feel gives you a really good dungeon. I will openly admit that these "default" settings really make a dungeon I like...but I think it may appeal to many others that simply want to run here and just click the button without fiddling with the custom settings. With that said, there are two new settings to choose from. There is a COIN AMOUNT that allows you to reduce the standard amounts of coins that do drop with the tool. This is handy for those groups with 2 to 3 characters that you only throw 2 to 3 orcs at them...so you don't want them to walk away with tons of loot that was meant for a larger group. There is also a setting I personally wanted...a checkbox to indicate whether Dragons, Demons, Devils, or Liches have loot. I don't really like having dragons appear but the generator just had a bad roll so the dragon has no loot. I know this is possible in many fantasy games...but I just don't want it to happen in my games. There is just something about these creatures because they are so rare and powerful...that you want there to be "some" kind of loot when they are finally slain. Because it is something I really wanted...it is unchecked by default. I also have the map appear as the first thing on the output...with the name of the dungeon coming after. This helps when you want to print the dungeon on paper that the map is not being pushed down due to the dungeon name. It allows you to print a 4 wide and 3 high dungeon map on a landscape 8.5x11 piece of paper...with some page setup tweaks and no map getting cut off. That is roughly about 160 room map...which is huge.

I changed the way the atmosphere generates so there is more mundane rooms...but with a tad different descriptions. The generator previously had alot of rooms with mist or steam that I felt it was appearing too often. The biggest change to the "randomness" is the mundane items that appear in the dungeon. Before I had things in the list like "silver spoon"...as an example. What I did is combed through the list and made almost everything appear more random. You could find a silver spoon or a rusty iron spoon. Maybe you will find a gold spoon. Maybe you find a spoon that is worth 20 platinum or 2 copper. The other change was that I simply had iron maidens in the list. Now there is a chance to have a rack, iron maiden, spike chair...stuff like that. Not only these torture devices...but there could be a body found on/in it with items in the pockets. The fun addition was the huge pile of ashes. This may appear and may have something in the pile. The fun part was adding the chance that a helmet or wizard hat may appear on top of the ash pile. Let that keep the adventurers guessing what happened. The dungeon furniture needed a little more depth as well. Before I would simply have the tool produce something like an "oak chair". Now it may produce a "broken oak chair" or a "warped mahogany chair".

I added something simple to the generated monsters. Whenever a dragon, demon, devil or lich appear...they will produce a random name for them. This is minor but it is fun to have a name to go with the face. There is also a small chance that a dragon will have a dragon egg in their possession.

I also remember the days of playing old computer role-playing games, walking through a dangerous dungeon, and then running into some kind of mouth on the wall warning you to stay away or that you are just too late to do any good. These magical talking mouths are fun to run into because you never know who put them there or even how long they have been there. They simply mutter some sentence the casting wizard spoke that then causes it to repeat the sentence to adventurers that wander by. Because you never know how long they have been there, you cannot even guess if what it is saying is current. You can be in a long void tomb only to run into a magical talking mouth telling you that you are simply too late to save the virgin that is to be sacrificed. This virgin could have been kidnapped centuries ago or maybe is in the lower levels at that moment. Well today I include these in the Ultimate Dungeon Creator. They are included in the Unusual Items section of choices because I felt they are just as rare as magic pools, altars, and such. They may appear helpful by telling of nearby treasure or a trap to watch out for. They more often just taunt the group with random warnings and threats. Some are of unknown origin while others freely let the adventurers know who cast the spell to place the magical talking mouth.

[Wizardawn]

This tool now has Labyrinth Lord support for monsters (with AEC monsters), instead of using my generic fantasy monsters. I still have to investigate on how to add the treasure to the mix, but for now the tool makes some really good randomized treasure that works in any game.