Chapter 5: Dungeon Checklist

In this chapter, you’ll begin to define features of the dungeon—its dangers, its treasures, and its inhabitants—by working through a checklist of essential features.

Table of contents

  1. What makes a good dungeon?
  2. A reason to explore
  3. A reason to talk
  4. A reason to fight
  5. A reason to flee
  6. A reason to breathe easy
  7. A reason to experiment
  8. A reason to be surprised
  9. A reason to return
  10. Activity: Brainstorm checklist itemsActivity
    1. Step 1. A reason to explore
    2. Step 2. A reason to talk
    3. Step 3. A reason to fight
    4. Step 4. A reason to flee
    5. Step 5. A reason to breathe easy
    6. Step 6. A reason to experiment
    7. Step 7. A reason to be surprised
    8. Step 8. A reason to return
  11. Further reading

What makes a good dungeon?

During this course, we will be writing towards a checklist. A checklist gives us a way to define what “good” looks like in a fantasy adventure game. By writing dungeons towards a set of specific criteria, you should be able to create a dungeon that leads to a fun player experience.

That said, this list shouldn’t be seen as definitive. Some criteria might apply more than others for your dungeon’s themes. Additionally, not every single fun dungeon might check every box—small dungeons might only have one or two of these features. Alternate checklists are provided in the further reading section. But overall, these are characteristics that will help create a better experience at the gaming table.

To create a good dungeon, you should have:

  • A reason to explore
  • A reason to talk
  • A reason to fight
  • A reason to flee
  • A reason to breathe easy
  • A reason to experiment
  • A reason to be surprised
  • A reason to return

During this chapter, we’ll continue brainstorming exercises. You don’t have to finalize these right now—the most important thing at this point is to generate some cool ideas.

This checklist helps ensure that all character classes can be equally useful along with their backgrounds, tools, “silly” items, and randomly generated ability scores (if that’s in your game) for a given dungeon. This is especially important at lower levels of many fantasy adventure games, where PCs cannot sustain repeated combat. Constant fights can disadvantage adventurers with non-combat abilities, equipment, attributes or specialties—leading to a reduced enjoyment.

There’s a huge number of resources in the role-playing hobby to draw on. RPGs have been around a long time and it’s never been better. There’s a vibrant DIY community of incredibly talented people creating all sorts of blog posts, zines, and indie games. When you set out to create your dungeon, you’ll have an enormous amount of things to borrow from and be inspired by.

Your dungeon can be more about curation than creation. As you write down your checklist, feel free to borrow the best ideas from your favorite modules. Cut and paste different dungeons from different creators together. Make them your own!

A reason to explore

Each dungeon should have something the players want. This might be gold, equipment, information, helpful characters, or beneficial dungeon features.

“Treasure” is a fine reward (gold!). Flavorful treasure is better (a chest of pirate’s stolen doubloons). Specific treasure is even better (the lost crown of Arduin).

The dungeon might have beneficial features in it that are just as good as treasures, such as learning spells from looted spell books or gaining beneficial mutations from enchanted wells.

Rewards might be less concrete, difficult to quantify, and impossible to loot. For example, a dungeon can give the players an opportunity to improve their relationship with a faction or prove themselves worthy for mentorship from a powerful NPC.

Rewards can also be based on the story of your campaign world: you explore the dungeon to avert a doom, to quickly travel across the overworld map, or to discover lore needed to progress in an ongoing quest.1

For example:

  • An idol to the finfolk god, Bloopblorp, which has emeralds as eyes
  • A magic sword that can open any door in the Undertomb
  • Harpies are pretty good conversationalists and know a lot of rumors; you just better not meet them when they’re hungry
  • A retired sword-saint, who might be willing to teach you her skills
  • A pool that can heal any wound (but its magic will work only once per person)

Advertise why the players might be going into the dungeon early in the adventure. These are the “hooks” that give the player characters the pretense for going into the dungeon in the first place. You’ll derive your hooks from the treasures, aid, and boons you place into the dungeon while writing it; we’ll discuss these in chapter 14 of this course.

A reason to talk

If every creature attacks on sight, the game quickly becomes a slog. It’s much more interesting if players can talk to just about everything. (More ways to interact = more choices. Choices are fun.)

Establish each NPC or faction with a sentence that describes:

  • What they want (a goal or desire); and
  • What they can give (a resource).

These two sentences will help you be able to respond to player requests and more quickly assess the likelihood of success during player negotiations with that NPC.

It’s okay if the wants are unreasonable and the gives are undesirable as far as the players are concerned; that’s often how things are in real life. We meet people whose demands we can’t meet and have resources we don’t want, can’t take, or don’t help.

It is easy to get caught up in the relationship of the NPC or faction to your world and forget to answer an important question as it relates to your game: What’s in it for the players? I view this as the “gameable” aspect of NPCs.

For example:

  • A sisterhood of dire spiders who weave their history into their web tapestries:
    • They want pieces of fine art, living hellflies to eat, and interesting stories.
    • They can offer tapestries of spun silk that depict important events in the lives of the sisterhood.
  • A family of xenophobic ghouls who believe themselves descended from royalty:
    • They want fresh bones to gnaw, to be flattered, and their ancient treasures to be restored to them.
    • They can offer royal titles for a kingdom that no longer exists.

A reason to fight

Not everything can be negotiated with. Interesting combats can be thrilling.

Place some creatures in each dungeon whose default Disposition is aggressive. This might be a non-sentient creature that sees the adventurers as food (like a slime) or a creature whose worldview directly conflicts with the guild’s (like a skeleton who sees meat creatures as slave drivers unfairly imprisoning their brethren).

For example:

  • Imps (procreate through violence)
  • Rust grubs (hungry for the guild’s metal)
  • Angry ghosts (resentful of the guild’s life)
  • Jack of Napes (a gnome serial killer; just a real jerk)

A reason to fight doesn’t always have to mean “to the death.” Enemies can have objectives such as kidnapping a particular adventurer instead of “kill them all.” This, along with Morale rules, can keep combats from being a slog.

Even hostile forces can provide rich role-playing opportunities: through shouted insults, players can learn about an enemy’s motivations, current plans, belief systems, or the dungeon level in general.

A reason to flee

Not every battle can be won. The players should occasionally be faced with a foe who cannot be defeated through honest combat. Place some large, overwhelming, or magically potent creatures into each dungeon to keep things dangerous.

For example:

  • Dragons
  • Incorporeal creature who can only hurt by music
  • Walking iron statue set with basilisk eyes
  • Water elemental that travels the dungeon as a roaring wave
  • …No seriously put a dragon in your dungeon

“A reason to flee” is more than just some very scary monster; it’s an opportunity to show off a fantastical element of your world by showing not telling, especially at low level where players often are expecting to only encounter giant rats or skeletons. It also a place to present a tantalizing puzzle for the players to solve—how do they get past the fire elemental of the black pit?

A reason to breathe easy

Dungeons should have some safe spaces. Empty rooms provide lacunas in the frenetic pace of the Crawl. Safe spaces are a chance to pause, camp, hold the line, set ambushes, or scheme in peace.

Some rooms are safe because they are secret, particularly defensible, or protected by some magical force. Others are safe simply because they are empty of permanent residents. (These rooms can become dangerous if a random encounter or other danger enters the room.)

For example:

  • A normal empty room
  • An abandoned camp in a hallway between two secret doors
  • A bonfire lit with sacred flame, repels monsters
  • A shrine that charms all into passivity
  • A magical bedroom that straightens itself every few minutes

As opposed to the “reason to flee,” the “reason to breathe easy” can still be an opportunity to show off how fantastical the world is. In this area, art, furniture, or passive magical effects can drive home facets of the setting. If players have been asking questions about major events, perhaps the answers are here.

A reason to experiment

Create things that are interesting to interact with. These can be dangerous or helpful, but should be big, obvious, and weird. These features can be interesting on their own merits, but they also provide opportunities for dungeon elements to react to each other. What happens when a player puts an unbreakable dragon egg into the degenerate dwarves’ hydraulic press, for example?

As the players encounter these features, they’ll experiment with them to learn how they work. Overcoming obstacles will create a sense of accomplishment that your players will savor. Similarly, if the players manage to transform something dangerous into something helpful, the sense of accomplishment will be all the deeper.

Most dungeons benefit from at least a few things that are pretty gonzo. Write out some crazy ideas. Cut the ones that seem silly or hard to communicate to your players. For example:

  • An idol to the machine god, hands cupped to receive offerings. Any item placed into the hands is broken down into its constituent parts.
  • A huge nut spinning around a huge, threaded column. If appropriately powered, the nut will turn to create an elevator that moves up and down between the dungeon levels.
  • A pipe organ made out of stalactites. Different songs have different effects on the local ghost population.

Once clever players understand how a feature works, they can turn this information to their advantage. For example, if the players figure out how to trigger a trap, they can lure monsters into it or use the trap to smash open locked chests.

These experiments can also help answer the why of the dungeon. Why was this dungeon built or formed here? Why are X and Y factions fighting over these grey halls? Why did the queen of old keep sending her best knights to die here so that their undead bodies now haunt these rooms?

A reason to be surprised

Though information allows the players to make meaningful choices, it’s essential there are still opportunities for exploration, discovery, and surprise. Not everything should be obvious at first glance. Create some secrets that keep players invested in investigating the dungeon.

For example:

  • A secret door behind a huge oil painting
  • A trapped false tomb to deter would-be grave robbers
  • A pit trap in front of the throne, allowing the Slug King to drop those he’s displeased with into the Pit of the Ever-hungry Slime

Surprise breaks up routine and challenges expectations. Surprise often creates dramatic moments, last stands, and narrow escapes that excite players and create stories that live on past the game itself.

A reason to return

Not every challenge should be able to be overcome right away. There is a satisfaction to seeing something that you don’t understand yet, then realizing later how you can complete the challenge. Create intentional moments in the dungeon that oblige your players to loop back, either after they’ve explored deeper rooms or after they’ve returned to civilization and come back to the dungeon.

For example:

  • A gargantuan door can only be opened if a huge wheel is turned. Lure the giant hamster from a deeper dungeon level to the wheel to open the door.
  • A section of the dungeon is flooded. Procure potions of waterbreathing and return to explore this area.
  • The dungeon witch will only help you if you take a letter to her sister, the sea witch. Deliver the letter and return to get her aid.

A big caveat here is that you don’t want your dungeon to grind to a halt. Challenges like puzzles and riddles work best when they gate rewards and optional content. It’s not fun to sit in front of the entrance to a dungeon, watching the wizard player trying to guess what “Speak friend and enter” means while everybody else is bored. You can put content that you anticipate players needing to return to, but make sure there are alternate routes as well so the fun doesn’t stop.

“Reasons to return” can also be rooms on structures in a dungeon that provide lasting benefit allowing the dungeon to maintain some longevity in the players’ mind. For instance, once you have dispersed the wolf bats of the foul wizard Murger, the shrine to Helios could be restored and every Friday at noon it can enchant a weapon. Now the dungeon is a semi-domain that the adventurers might want to maintain or can become a location of future conflicts—both reasons to return.

Activity: Brainstorm checklist itemsActivity

In this activity, you will brainstorm at least one idea for each item in the dungeon checklist.

Don’t place anything on the map yet

You shouldn’t place these ideas in any specific room yet. You’ll decide where to put these ideas on your map in chapter 11. You’ll might also think of some non-permanent features that players might encounter as they travel through rooms—these will be placed on the random encounter table during chapter 13. During this exercise, creating interesting ideas is the most important thing.

For this activity, open the workbook that you created in chapter 2. Navigate to page 5: Checking Off the Dungeon Checklist. For each step, write your answers down here.

If you want to see my version of the workbook with this activity complete, check it out here.

Step 1. A reason to explore

Consider why the players are venturing into the dungeon. For each question, write a sentence or two, drawing on your brainstorming notes and dungeon’s themes.

  1. What reason do the players have to go into the dungeon in the first place?
  2. What is a concrete piece of treasure (gold, jewelry, works of art) that can be discovered?
  3. Is there a beneficial ability (spell, permanent enchantment, answered question about rare information, special character feature) that can be gained in the dungeon?

Step 2. A reason to talk

In chapter 3, you wrote down the name of a few potential NPCs to include in your dungeon. Choose one of your NPCs to focus on for this step. If that NPC represents a faction, the answers for this step will be representative of that faction’s interests.

  1. Write a sentence that describes what the NPC or faction wants or what their ultimate goal is.
  2. Write a sentence that describes what the NPC or faction can offer the PCs.

Step 3. A reason to fight

In chapter 3, you wrote down the name of potential creatures that might populate your dungeon. Use this planning to inform your decisions during this step.

Write a brief description of one to three monsters that are antagonistic by default to the player characters.

Step 4. A reason to flee

Based on what you’ve written so far about the monsters in your dungeon, consider if you want a powerful monster that the players should not take on using straight-forward combat. If yes:

  1. Write a sentence or two describing the powerful monster.
  2. Explain one or two potential ways the players might deal with, avoid, or ultimately defeat this monster without going into combat.
  3. If you’re not using a dragon, take a moment to reconsider.

If you decided to give your dungeon a boss monster in chapter 3, this is a good candidate for this step.

If you decide that you don’t want a powerful monster as a threat, consider if there are any other potent threats that make sense to include based on your dungeon’s theme. These might be a curse for taking sacred treasures, a poisonous gas that puts a ticking clock on how long the players can spend in the dungeon, or any other threat not made to be “defeated.”

Step 5. A reason to breathe easy

Drawing on your dungeon’s themes, write a sentence or two about an area that’s safe for the players to pause or rest in.

Step 6. A reason to experiment

Choose one of the dungeon features from the list below or make up your own. Then, write a sentence or two for each of the following questions:

Dungeon features

altar, bonfire, cage, door, fountain, idol, laboratory, mirror, mosaic, painting, pedestal, sarcophagi, statue, throne, well

  1. Describe an unusual magical or mechanical process this feature exhibits that is not immediately apparent.
  2. Create an obvious hint for how the players might understand that this feature has this unusual ability.
  3. Write a brief description of what might happen when the players interact with this feature.

Step 7. A reason to be surprised

Think about the reasons you’ve outlined to explore. Then, for each question, write a sentence or two:

  1. What kind of secret doors, hidden passages, or illusion might exist to hide a treasure or boon?
  2. What is a hint the players can receive to learn about the existence of this hidden treasure?
  3. What is a hidden danger, trap, or hazard that might guard a treasure or boon?
  4. What is a hint the players can receive to learn about the existence of this hidden danger?

Step 8. A reason to return

Using the themes of your dungeon, write a brief description of a challenge that requires prep work, unusual items, or supernatural aid to overcome.

Wrapping up

Congratulations on writing out eight separate dungeon features! Don’t worry if you think some of them need a little work. The work of curating, improving, finessing, combining, and rewriting comes later. This is just fuel to feed to your fire when you start the process of writing room descriptions.

Further reading

Dungeon checklist by Goblinpunch

The checklist that this course uses is directly inspired by this blog post by Arnold K. of the Goblinpunch blog.

An alternate checklist

If you prefer a different (and slightly more irreverent) oeuvre, here is an alternate checklist to write to.

Why can’t I just make this stuff up on the fly?

“Blorb is a prep-focused playstyle, and prep is central, but never prep plot. Do prep entities. Places, enemies, friends, items, rewards. Porte-Monstre-Trésor.”

Some people like RPGs that feature a lot of improv. That’s fine! But the fun of improvisation is different from the fun of discovery. By considering what is in your dungeon before the players begin exploring it, the world feels more concrete, grounded, and explorable. This principle is called “blorb” (a deliberately funny word). Read more about the Blorb Principle here.


  1. All spot art in this chapter (and this course!) by BertDrawsStuff