Designing Dungeons Course

Or, How to Kill a Party in 30 Rooms or Less

If you are hosting a fantasy adventure game, you own the act of creating dangerous environments, populating them with monsters, designing traps to be overcome, and hiding rewards. In short, you are the master of the dungeon.

Creating a dungeon can seem daunting, but it’s really just a series of small, discrete tasks. The act of creating a dungeon is actually fun for the Game Master and the discovery process is fun for the players.

This course—Designing Dungeons: Or, How to Kill a Party in 30 Rooms or Less—is a series of discussions, practical examples, and exercises designed to walk new Game Masters through the process of creating a new dungeon from scratch. The course provides a hands-on approach to the act of dungeon writing in an attempt to demystify the process. By following along, you’ll construct a dungeon for your players to explore.

Get started

Are you ready to design a dungeon for your players to delve? Continue to chapter 1 to learn more about the goals of the course, learn a bit about the authors, and the tools we’ll use as we work on this project together.

🥇 2026 ENNIE Awards

Vote for us!

The Designing Dungeons Course has been nominated for an ENNIE Award for Best Online Content. But we need your votes to help us win!

How to vote

1. Go to the ennie-awards.com’s voting booth

2. Click on Best Online Content

3. Select Designing Dungeons Course: Or, How to Kill a Party in 30 Rooms or Less, Joshua McCrowell & Warren D as #1.

4. Press submit!

5. Receive our eternal gratitude for your support.

Voting runs from July 10th to July 19th.