Two weeks ago, I started building what I called Baby’s First Dungeon. I didn’t call it that because it was meant for newbie players, but because I was showing newbie homebrewer GMs how to scratch-build their own dungeon adventures. If you haven’t read that first article yet, go back and read it now. Because this article picks up where that one left off.

Remember, the point of this s$&% is to build a simple, fun, quick-and-dirty dungeon. A QDD. It’s meant for a bunch of low-level PCs and involves some cultists trying to make friends with a devil in an abandoned wizard’s funhouse. Ring a bell? Good.

I already figured out all the s$&% there is to find in the dungeon. Now it’s time to actually map the thing out and plan every encounter. You know, to actually build the f$&%ing dungeon. Which is, frankly, the easy part of this whole process.

Step 4: Sketch the Map Until You’re Happy

Dungeons need maps. They don’t nice maps. They don’t need pretty maps. But they do need maps.

Most GMs do this s$&% backward. They draw their dungeon maps first and then put s$&% in all the little rooms. Hell, the DMG even tells you to do it that way. But, as I already said, the dungeon isn’t the adventure. It’s just a container for adventure. The adventure’s all the s$&% that happens inside the dungeon. The map — and the backstory and the setting — exist to serve the cool s$&% that happens in the dungeon.

Admittedly, that does make drawing the map tricky sometimes. It’s a lot easier to crap a map onto a piece of graph paper and then just fill up the rooms. Or plonk tiles down using your mapping software of choice. And that will get you a dungeon. But this process — harder though it sometimes is — will get you an adventure.

Mapping the dungeon’s a two-step process. First, you sketch the map and erase it and resketch it and erase it and move s$&% around and sketch it again and keep going until it feels right. Then, you draw the real map over the sketch. Or based on the sketch. That’s why I usually start with a piece of graph paper and a pencil. Even if I’m ultimately going to use some mapping app to make the final product.

When you sketch the map, the key’s to place the big set-piece encounters on the map first. To figure out where they are, how big they are, and in what order they come. Remember progressions? The earlier encounters in the progressions have to come first. Or else they ain’t progressions.

At the same time, you’ve got to make sure the dungeon’s shaped the way it should be shaped. Depending on the theme — if you even have one at this point — that might not be a problem. Or it might be a major pain in the a$&%. I mean, if you’re just making a cave network or a standard labyrinth of underground chambers, just put s$%& wherever. But if you’ve stupidly decided your dungeon’s some kind of structure — like a castle or a temple or a tower or a f$&%ing wizard’s villa — the map’s got to look right. And that means sketching and resketching a lot.

When you make your first dungeon, don’t constrain yourself as I did. Just do a dungeon-dungeon.

Either way, though, it’s still worth thinking a little about what the map should look like. There’s a difference between a jumble of underground rooms and a windy, zig-zaggy labyrinth of limestone caves.

Enough talk, though. Let’s see what I can do with what I’ve got. And what I’ve got are a bunch of encounters split between two progressions and also an imp in a cage. This s$&%:

Satan’s Little Helpers

• Cultists
• Invisible Wall and Teleporter Puzzle(s)
• Cultists in Invisible Wall Maze
• Cultists with Noble McBloodhawk
• Spined Devil

Magical Defenses

• Flying Swords Guarding Treasure(s)
• Non-Flying Sword Not Guarding Treasure
• Spell Turret Trap(s) Guarding Treasure
• Animated Armor Guarding Treasure

Other

• Imp in a Cage

I’ve also got the pain-in-the-a$& constraint of designing a villa. A fancy house. Houses — and all above-ground structures, really — have tightly packed, adjacent rooms with no wasted or negative space. No long, windy passages that go nowhere. None of that s$&%. Hallways just fill the spaces between the rooms.

Villas usually have a central atrium or courtyard with multiple wings coming off them. Maybe I can split the progressions between two different wings. The cultists took over one wing and made contact with the devil. They haven’t explored the other wing yet. Or else the traps have made them a little trigger shy. Maybe they’ve explored the living spaces, but not the workspaces.

That s$&% firmly lodged in my brain, I take out a piece of graph paper and just try to get some basics down. The encounters — roughly sized — and the overall shape of the space. Here’s the result:

I don’t think that needs too much explanation. The courtyard — where the PCs enter — contains the initial cultist encounter, setting them up as antagonists. The west wing carries the PCs mostly through the Satan’s Little Helpers progression while the east wing contains the treasure and traps and ends with the imp.

Notice how big my encounter spaces are. And note, they are encounter spaces. They’re not rooms. An encounter can play out in a single room or multiple, interconnected rooms. But encounters — especially in D&D 5E — need some room to stretch out and get comfortable. The smallest encounters usually need at least 30 squares. I usually aim for a six-square-by-six-square minimum for most encounters. But I did cram the devil into a smaller space. Why? Because that fight’s going to be a b$&% for low-level PCs because it can fly and shoot spikes. Constraining the devil lessens its advantages.

Like I said though, one sketch ain’t enough. So, I do another pass. I move some things around, add some details, and gradually the dungeon comes into focus. Here’s the second pass:

Now it looks more like a villa. I defined some of the rooms, took away the negative space, and so on. You can see what I did. It doesn’t need much discussion. But it might take you a few passes to get from my first sketch to my second sketch. It’s just a practice thing. Remember, you can sketch as much as you need.

But there is something I need to discuss. And it ain’t gonna make you happy.

The Painful Truth

It might not be obvious to you yet, but it’s becoming obvious to me that I don’t actually have a lot of room for those invisible walls and teleporter puzzles. Neither in terms of physical space nor in terms of room in the adventure. For a low-level adventure, this one’s already pretty loaded. So, the idea’s got to go.

I’m as sad as you are that I can’t do the teleporter mirror maze force wall puzzle thing. Well, that’s not true. First, I totally could do it. I’d have to add a couple of extra spaces to introduce the concepts properly and then add at least one or two puzzle spaces to do something interesting with the ideas other than just using them as terrain in a fight. But I’m not going to.

Second, I’m not sad that I can’t. Or won’t. And you can’t be either.

It’s harsh lesson time. This s$&% happens. It happens every time you sit down to create something. You have to get used to it if you want to be a creative-type GM. Or a creative-type anything. You’re always going to come up with amazing ideas that really excite you. And you’re always going to have to flush a bunch of them down the crapper. Always. It’s a fact of creative life. And it’s how this s$&% works. First, you generate ideas. Then, you start putting them together. Then, you realize some of the ideas just don’t fit right. And then, you either do the right thing and jettison them and move on. Or, you do the wrong thing and try to make it all work and end up taking ten times as long to come up with a bloated, contrived piece of crap.

As I said, I could make the force wall teleportation puzzle thing work. Easily. I’m good at this s$&%. But this is Baby’s First Dungeon. And the story’s about some cultists and a captured devil. And there’s a side bit with some treasure protected by minor tricks and traps. That’s enough for two or three sessions of low-level adventure. If I crammed in the teleporter puzzle s$&%? It’d bloat the adventure and I’d only be doing it because I think that s$&%’s cool. Not because it works. Not because it fits. Not because it serves the game’s purpose.

I’d be doing it because I was attached to my ideas.

This is a bitter f$&%ing lesson. It sucks. But every creative type has learned it. Every creator knows that somewhere between a tenth and a third of all the ideas they ever come up with are going to get trashed. Every creator knows that every revision involves cutting between a tenth and a quarter of the content out. Forever. It’s hard to accept that s$&%. But you have to.

Want to know how hard it is to get over that? Well, it’s so hard that it delayed this article a full week. That’s right, you could have been reading this a week ago. But even though I’m totally okay with throwing my ideas out — because I’m used to that s$&% — there was a part of my brain that said, “Angry, you promised people an awesome teleporter mirror maze puzzle thing and people are going to be really disappointed if that ain’t in the final edit.” For a week, I struggled between making it work and being true to the process.

Truth won. I wouldn’t be the Angry GM if it didn’t.

You’ll always come up with more ideas than you need. You’ll always have to do throw s$&% out. And you won’t want to do it. But you have to.

That said…

Once you get used to creating s$&% — especially once you understand how to vomit forth random ideas without censoring them and then building cool stuff from the brain vomit — you’ll eventually discover that the ideas are the easy part. They’re actually not that valuable. I mean, the whole mirror maze thing was just a couple of random words my brain spit out. I didn’t invest anything to come up with that. I just opened the valve and out that came. Eventually, if you learn to generate ideas without censoring, lower your standards, and trust yourself, you’ll realize ideas are pretty cheap. You can afford to throw them away. Especially because there’s no such things as good ideas or bad ideas. The good — or the bad — is in the assembly, polish, and execution.

Oh, and honestly, building good puzzles is hard. It’d take a whole article to explain it. Maybe more. I can’t really do it as a side note to a whole other article about dungeon building. I do have some ideas in the works for puzzle-building articles. If you want to see crap on puzzle-building in the future, you know what to do.

Long story short: RIP teleporter puzzle mirror mazes. Now, back to the adventure-buildy fun!

More Step 4: Because I’m Still Not Happy

I’ve got the encounters spaced out and sized out and I’ve jettisoned the crap that won’t work without looking back or shedding a tear. So, I could call myself happy here. But this dungeon’s not just a dungeon. It’s a structure and it’s supposed to look like a thing. This means I should have some idea of what all the rooms actually are. Know what I mean? So, I’m going to give the whole thing one more pass and name the spaces. It ain’t something I’d do with a cave complex. Except I probably would. At some point early in the process, I try to give every room on my map an iconic name. My players are currently exploring a maze of old caves converted into shrines and vaults by an ancient civilization. And all the chambers have names like Pillared Hall and Labyrinth of Icons and Hall of Eyes and Path of Razor Sharp Obsidian Death. No lie.

Anyway…

Nice, right? But still just a sketch. So the final final sketch involves drawing some walls and doors and doorways just to show how everything’s connected. Forgive me for adding some background color and drop shadows for readability. I promise I won’t make a pretty map. Everyone gets mad at me when I show off my mad mapping skillz.

Overall, a nice layout. I’m still not sure what I’m going to do with the Maze room. Since I’m dumping teleporter puzzles, I’ll have to simplify that encounter or something. But I’ll figure that out later. For now, it’s a map. A barebones map, but totally functional.

Step 5: Encounter it Up

With a barebones sketch of a map, it’s time to do some actual mechanical game design s$&%. At last. It’s time to figure out the encounter details. And when I say encounter details, I’m not talking about fancy narrative design bulls$&%. I mean numbers. After all, this is a dungeon. It doesn’t need fancy narrative encounter design. Besides, I’m the one who’ll be running the adventure. And I pretty much know all the narrative crap already. I don’t have to write down anything I already know.

The Courtyard

First, the courtyard. The initial encounter with the cultists and the thugs. But I don’t really need cultists and thugs. They’re basically the same thing. While the thugs are mechanically more interesting, they’re also more powerful. From a Baby’s First Dungeon perspective, it’s best to stick with cultists alone.

The issue I’ve got with the cultists — you can see their stats on MM 345 — the issue with the cultist is they’ve got no ranged attacks. Just melee attacks. The party’s going to fight the cultists in three separate encounters. I need some variety. So, I’m just going to give each cultist a brace of throwing daggers by scribbling a line of text on a sticky note and tacking it to their stat blocks:

Dagger. Melee or Ranged Weapon Attack. +3 to hit, reach 5 ft. or range 20/60 ft., one target. Hit: 3 (1d4+1) piercing damage.

Now, the cultists are CR 1/8 and they’re worth 25 XP. And the DMG explains that a party of four 1st level PCs… Nah, I’m just f$&%ing with you. I’m not doing any math here. I’m giving them throwing knives and shoving three of them in the courtyard. Three’s good. Probably.

But an encounter ain’t just about stats, is it? It’s also about terrain. A courtyard is mostly an open space but also contains some foliage to provide cover or obscurement and to make the fight more interesting. Again, I’m not thinking about this s$&% too hard. I’m just going to make the courtyard look like a courtyard. And I’m trusting my gut to help me make it look like a courtyard that’ll be fun to have a fight in.

I turn the door into a foyer with a few walls to channel the PCs in and create some blind spots. I enclose the central courtyard with a low hedge wall. Ranged attackers can attack into the center of the room while staying safe from melee attackers. I add some underbrush for difficult terrain and two trees for cover.

I know this all seems like haphazard, slapdash crap. Especially coming from a guy who once wrote 15,000 words about the design of a single combat encounter. Nonetheless, it works. Just go with whatever s$&% seems fun, play it out, and learn from the experience.

The Maze

Next’s the encounter with cultists in the Mirror Maze of Invisible Force Walls. Except it isn’t. Since I’m not taking the time to set up the force walls and teleporters, I can’t really throw a complicated invisible maze into a fight. But that leaves me with another encounter with cultists. And I’ve got to escalate it. Otherwise, it’s just the same fight as the courtyard.

I could try to differentiate it with terrain, but the first room’s already got interesting terrain. And big empty rooms are okay if there’s interesting s$&% in there. So far, I’ve introduced the cultists as dudes with swords and knives. But cults in D&D should have some magic, right? There’s stats on MM 342 for an acolyte. A low-level cleric. That’d work for a priest of the Gods of Hell or whatever, right? Maybe the priest advises the noble. Or manipulates the noble, using the noble’s resources and charisma while acting as the power behind the power. Maybe they’re using each other. And they hate each other. Who knows? Who gives a f$&%? It’s not like the party’s going to delve into this s$&%. It’s a dungeon.

Anyway, the acolyte’s fine as written, but I’m going to swap out a few of the spells. The cantrips are fine. It’s not like the priests will use anything but sacred flame if the fight comes down to cantrips anyway. But I’ll swap bless for bane because the latter feels more evil. I’ll also trade sanctuary for shield of faith and healing word for cure wounds. Yeah, the former is a weaker healing spell, but it works at range and it’s a bonus action and, honestly, you don’t ever want to give the baddies too much healing.

I can team the acolyte with a pair of cultist bodyguards. And instead of having a room that’s both ballroom and dining hall as I sketched, I can make this room a ballroom and leave the other room as a dining hall. I’ll hang some curtains around the walls and part of the stage. They probably won’t affect much, but who knows? Maybe something fun will happen.

Inner Courtyard

Here’s where the PCs confront Noble McBloodhawk, his bloodhawk, and a bunch of cultists. Originally, I had this idea that the noble would be up on a balcony or something, sending the hawk into the PC-on-cultist scrum below to claw out some eyeballs. Which, frankly, works for the bloodhawk. Turns out, it’s got the pack tactics traits. I didn’t know that when I put it on my list. Just a fun little surprise to f$&% up my players.

But I’ve got this one-story house. No upper floor. Which means no balcony. But that’s fine. The cultists and the PCs can still have a throw down in the middle of the room, the noble can still hide at the far end of the room, and the hawk can still shred the squishes on the fringes. Besides, I want the PCs to bypass the cultists and take down the noble before he runs. Perhaps claiming his silver rapier to use against the spiny devil. So, an open space is best here too.

That said, I can add a colonnade around the outside of the court. That makes it look like a courtyard and the overhang provides some cover from the divebombing bloodhawk if the PCs want to use it.

Spined Devil

Finally, I’ve got the encounter with the spined devil. I wanted to trap it in a smaller room to give the PCs an edge, but the bedroom’s a little too small. The size will work against the PCs. So, instead, I’ll put the devil in the solarium. The ceiling will keep it from flying around with impunity. And I can clutter the room with furniture to impede its ranged attacks. The devil doesn’t have a lot of hit points, so if they focus, the party can take it apart in two or three rounds even if they can’t overcome its resistance to nonmagical attacks. But the thing can also dish out a lot of damage. And spellcasters with the wrong spells — like firebolt and burning hands — will have some trouble with the thing.

Maybe the encounter doesn’t have to be a straight knock-down and drag-out if the party plays smart. So the devil got summoned years ago by this now-dead wizard, right? Why did the devil stick around? Maybe it can’t leave. Something about the conditions under which it was summoned or the nature of the house has it trapped. And the cultists holed up here while the noble negotiates a deal to release it in return for its service.

Maybe there’s a Macguffin. A thing. In a silver box. Which the devil can’t touch. And it’s in the library. With the object, the devil can return to the Nine Hells. Otherwise, it’s trapped here and can’t even leave the house. Something like that.

If the noble flees the fight in the inner court and cowers behind the devil and the PCs give chase, there’s this tense standoff. The noble will be like, “I command you to kill them,” and the devil’s like, “f$&% you with your commands, I don’t work for you yet. You haven’t brought me what I seek. But maybe these fine folk will help me out instead…”

Meanwhile, if the noble’s dead and the PCs come barging in, the devil will probably open negotiations rather than attack outright. If the party’s not willing to deal, they can still use that distraction to get the drop on the devil. If they’re smart.

Meanwhile meanwhile, if it does come to a fight and the devil utterly demolishes the party, it can hold off killing them and demand they bring it the Macguffin. Probably, it’ll keep one of the injured PCs as a hostage. But the party can buy their way out of a TPK if they’re willing to cut a little deal with a minor devil.

Meanwhile meanwhile meanwhile, it also gives the party a reason to explore the other wing of the house if they come this way first.

This, kids, is what we call a loaded solution. And they usually happen just like this. Just spitballing ideas and thinking through how they’d play out. And this totally couldn’t have happened if I’d written a bunch of bulls$&% backstory and goals first.

Anyway, solarium with scattered furniture…

The Entire East Wing

On the other side of the house, I’ve got a vault — hidden behind a secret door — a library, and four galleries to decorate. And I’ve got some flying swords, a lightning trap, a suit of animated armor, and a non-flying sword to decorate with. I’ve also got a silver box with a Macguffin and a silver cage with an imp for the library.

The galleries are easy. The wizard displayed his valuable arts here. Apart from some mundane wall hangings and minor trophies with no intrinsic value, each gallery has one valuable art displayed on a pedestal. And each art is protected somehow.

I used open doorways rather than closed doors here for a reason. The party’s more likely to peer into each room in turn and then explore them as they move up the hall. With closed doors, it’s a crapshoot. The party might move up one side of the hallway then open the far door then come back down the other side of the hallway. But players will always peer into open doorways. And once they figure out the whole layout, they’ll probably check out at least one — if not both — of the southern galleries before they check the northern galleries.

So, each of the southern galleries will have a pair of flying swords on the wall above the treasure. And to create an obvious trigger radius — since I want the players to actually try to figure out and circumvent this s$%& — I’ll add a raised dais for the pedestal to sit on. The players will probably search the dais for traps, find none, try to touch the treasure, get attacked by the swords — which aren’t traps — and then get nervous about the other wall decorations.

Meanwhile, in one of the northern galleries, I’ll hang a single sword. The magical +1 longsword. Which the party will probably be really nervous about touching. In the other, I’ll hang a copper mace. The party will assume it’s going to come to life and plan accordingly. But it actually is a trap. Whenever someone steps on the dais, it emits a bolt of lightning.

The library contains the imp and the silver Macguffin box and the spell scroll. The silver cage is probably a valuable art in itself. So maybe the art under the flying sword is phony. It’s not worth anything. When the sword doesn’t attack and they discover the object’s a fake, the PCs will hopefully check out the sword in more detail. Or maybe they’ll never realize the sword’s a magical treasure.

The silver box is probably valuable too. So that’s actually five arts. Even though I only rolled four. But that’s fine. D&D’s treasure tables suck anyway. I’ll fix that s$&% before the end.

Meanwhile, the vault contains the last magical item — the broach of shielding — and the wizard’s cash money. It’s also got a suit of animated armor that attacks anyone who doesn’t speak the password. The vault’s hidden behind a secret panel in the library bookshelf which is unlocked by moving a specific book because classics are classics for a reason.

Incidentally, the imp knows where the secret door is and also knows the armor guards the vault. It further knows about the spined devil, the nature of its deal with the wizard, its abilities, its weaknesses, everything. When the party enters the library, the imp will offer to reveal the location of some treasure — the vault — or information about a powerful monster — the spined devil — if the party will open the cage. If the party frees it, the imp will answer further questions. But each answer will cost the party a creepy but ostensibly harmless price. Maybe it will answer a single question from any PC who agrees to let it taste one drop of that PC’s blood.

Anyway, that wraps up the encounters.

Step 6: Spit Shine and Polish

At this point, I’m probably an hour to ninety minutes into the process. And, honestly, I’m done. I’d take what I’ve got right now to the table and run with it. I’ve got the map, I’ve got the encounters, I’ve got some hazy details, that’s enough for me. But that’s just me. You’ll probably want to polish this s$&% up.

Polishing is the process whereby you go back over the whole dungeon and finish it. You figure out any details you need to figure out before you can run the thing. You make whatever notes you need to make. And you make sure there’s no problems you can’t solve at the table. If you’re comfortable with Protological GMing — that is, pulling a game from your a$& — polishing will probably take you a couple of minutes. Or it could take you an hour. If it takes you more than an hour, you’re doing too f$&%ing much. Stop it.

Polishing’s kind of personal. Everyone has their own level of polish. The only thing I can say for sure is that everyone does way too much of it. So it’s hard for me to walk you through the polishing process. But if I was the sort of GM who polished s$&%, here’s what I’d polish:

First, I’d figure out the backstory since I’ve now built two potential interaction encounters and a Macguffin into the adventure. And, when I say I’d figure out the backstory, I mean I’d spitball a paragraph, give it a once over, and call it good enough.

Let me see what I can spitball here.

There’s this wizard. He’s wealthy. A trust fund baby. But not very powerful. He’s got enemies though. His imp familiar convinces him to use his wealth to buy some scrolls so he can make contact with a powerful fiend. In the end, the wizard cuts a deal with a fiend whereby he gets a spined devil on loan to deal with a particularly nasty rival. But the fiend insists the wizard finishes the job himself. The spined devil will capture the enemy and the wizard will cut out the enemy’s still-beating heart and present it to the spined devil. The spined devil will return to the fiend with the heart and the contract will be closed. Meanwhile, once the spined devil brings back the rival, it’s not to leave the wizard’s side until the heart is out of the rival’s chest. Basically, it ensures the wizard can’t get cold feet and that the wizard’s got a terrible, cold-blooded revenge murder on his soul. Because that’s how devils do. But the wizard thinks he can get himself a forever devil by not turning over the heart. He goes through with the ugly business and then locks the heart in a silver box. Now, the spined devil can’t leave the wizard’s side, let alone go back to the Nine Hells and report to its fiendish boss. But then, the wizard gets assassinated by one of his rivals and now the devil’s got a real problem. Years later, the cultists show up. The noble’s trying to buy the devil’s service but the devil really can’t promise it. It knows that it can’t do anything until someone gets the heart from the box. And once it has the heart, the contract’s up and it teleports back to the Nine Hells to report it. Devils can’t lie and they can’t make promises they can’t keep. And the devil doesn’t want to tell the noble that it needs the heart in the box because the noble will use that as leverage. So the negotiations are going badly. That’s when the PCs show up.

Good enough. And this whole story implies the wizard’s corpse is somewhere in the solarium. He was probably murdered by an assassin while he was dozing in front of the fire with a bottle of cognac and the devil can’t leave his desiccated bones. This suggests a way the cult could get the devil out of the house and use its heart-shaped box to blackmail it into service. Just bring the wizard bones along.

Second, examining the map, I notice there’s a problem. The party can skip the ballroom encounter by going through the dining hall. But that’s easy to solve. With the noble and the devil in a stalemate, the cultists have settled in. They’ve barricaded the dining hall so it’s only accessible from the inner court and they’re using it as a camp.

If the party tries to open the dining hall door, they’ll find it blocked. If they try to break through, they’ll alert the acolyte and the cultists in the ballroom who can then take up positions for an ambush, draw the PCs into the ballroom, or attack while the party’s distracted.

Also, I’d probably close up the passages between the southern and northern galleries just to hedge my bet that the party will explore both southern galleries before either of the northern galleries and learn the flying sword pattern before I f$&% with them by subverting it. Twice.

Third, there’s a lightning trap. I probably need some mechanics for it, right? DMG 120 tells me everything I need to know. It’s a magical device trap. Given this is Baby’s First Dungeon and it’s pretty loaded, I want a setback trap. Nothing too powerful. It just hurls a 30-foot line of lightning at the first person to set foot on the dais. Each creature in the line must make a DC 11 Dexterity saving throw, taking 5 (1d10) lightning damage on a failure or half as much on a success. A DC 15 Wisdom (Perception) check reveals a line of strange runes along the edge of the dais which can then be identified as triggers for a magical trap with a DC 15 Intelligence (Arcana) trap. A detect magic spell reveals an aura of evocation magic around the scepter.

Speaking of mechanics, there’s, fourth, a secret door. One section of the bookshelf is designed to swing open once unlocked. Noticing the secret door is moderately difficult, requiring a DC 15 Wisdom (Perception) check. If someone examines the bookshelf, a DC 15 Intelligence (Investigation) check reveals the one odd book that unlocks the secret door. If the investigator knows about the secret door and is searching for a mechanism specifically, they have advantage.

Fifth, because this is a low-level dungeon and it’s loaded with encounters, I’d scatter a few potions of healing around. One in the library and one on the acolyte in the ballroom. Good enough.

Sixth and last, there’s this s$&% with the valuable treasure. I could write a whole damned article about the sucky, boring-a$& bulls$&% treasure tables in D&D. They’re perfectly functional. They work fine. But they’re dull as dishwater. So f$&% that whole four 25 gp arts. I’m going to mix it up a bit and come up with my own valuable treasures.

• An irregular wooden chalice carved from reddish-black wood and stained with blood (10 gp)
• A fist-sized egg carved from heavy crystal and inscribed with whorls and spirals (35 gp)
• A jade-handled ivory ritual knife (85 gp)
• A ruby-like gemstone that’s actually made of colored glass (2 gp)
• A birdcage made of silver wire (50 gp) (contains an imp)
• A silver-plated, bone coffer with a simple clasp (125 gp) (contains a rotted human heart)

And with that, I’d consider the dungeon polished enough for anyone to run. Hell, with a nice writeup and some bloated flavor text, it might even be publication-worthy. Not bad for two hours of work that started with a blank page.

That’s the power of not-giving-a-f$&%-and-just-doing-whatever!

And now, the power… is yours!