Secrets of the Mad Mage's Level One

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In my last video I drew the first level of Halaster the Mad Mage's level one dungeon, and now I'm going to look at the geography and denizens to see what lessons we can learn in dungeon design practice. As we'll see, the designers are looking to give the central creatures of the dungeon a good purpose for living underground, while filling out the remaining rooms with typical underground creatures and puzzles and magic items.

The structure they use for this level is to identify the two major players on the level, who both control a whole series of rooms, and to give a sense of the wandering monsters the players might run across as the move down the hallways or attempt to take a short or long rest. In terms of these two competing power groups, one is localized, the other has more far-reaching connections. The local group is a gang of bandits called the Undertakers who demand a toll of 10 gp per character to pass, the global is a group of bugbears and goblins who work for Xanathar the beholder, who is a major figure in the Waterdeep world and who has plans for deeper levels and wants to control access to the dungeon, and this includes infiltrating the bandit group.

The Undertakers are described as a group of failed actors who impersonate vampires, complete with costumes and fake teeth. They use this disguise to scare adventuring parties 10 gold pieces per character to pass, and the Undertakers' skill at disguise and acting makes it a DC 14 insight check to see through it.

The competing group of bugbears are controlled by intellect devourers who work for Xanathar the Beholder. Their goal is to capture one of the bandit leaders and have an intellect devourer take their mind so that Xanathar can run the gang as well. The Undertakers are aware of the bugbear/goblin group and will try to convince parties they can't defeat or extort to attack them instead.

What you have with these two groups who dominate such a large part of this first level is a classic tactic used to get past the dungeon conundrum of why things would live unnaturally underground in dank hallways. Both of these groups have good reasons to stay there; obviously goblins are known for living in caves and dungeons but not necessarily bugbears, ettins tend to be solitary creatures, and certainly humans do not prefer living underground. So when you want to populate a dungeon with creatures that wouldn't live there give them a reason to.

I then analyze the dungeon in terms of how players would enter the dungeon, where they might go, and how the NPC's and monsters would react. I go over several scenarios, each based upon potential actions of the players, to demonstrate how this dungeon succeeds and coming up with reasonable outcomes and where I think it falls short. I also discuss some classic dungeon rooms such as a resource drain, puzzle rooms and and area where players might safely take a long or short rest. I also discuss "folly" rooms and dead end corridors and how they give your dungeon a realistic flavor: not every room has to have something!

Check out my podcast with Daniel Norton of @BanditsKeep. We talk about D&D and being a GM and a whole lot more.

Monsters and Treasure Podcast
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