This is a jam for Zungeons. Read more about Zungeons here. An excerpt:
Zines in TTRPGs in 2024 has come to mean “A5, highly produced booklet”, but that isn’t what zines have traditionally been. They were like earrings: local craft. I think that we should be embracing local craft in TTRPGs. The easiest way, is to make a dungeon. Let me explain how you can make a zine dungeon in the classic sense of the word: A zungeon.
Creating a dungeon is easy, and even publishing one is attainable, particularly if you unshackle yourself from what it should be, and let yourself make a zungeon.
Follow these steps, to begin with. It should take less than an hour:
- Go here and generate a dungeon. I suggest this dungeon generator because it’s not random, but rather based on the platonic ideal as calculated by Marcia B. Other generators aren’t as useful in my opinion, because they’re too big. Start small, and only increase the size of the container when your idea overflows.
- Choose a theme, then mix it with another theme. “Mermaid Vampire” “Slime waterfall”. If you get something boring like “cucumber demon” just do it again to get “cucumber demon jazz”. If you can’t think of any themes, draw cards and use those (tarot, Magic, Dixit).
- Create two monsters or NPCs (or groups) to inhabit your dungeon, riffing off the theme. Give them a goal and a method of achieving it. If you want stats, just take them from a similar stat block and tweak.
- Put the NPCs in their designated rooms, and then describe all of the rooms, all riffing off the theme.
- Pick a party level (X), and put Xd6 x 200 silver pieces and Xd6 x 100 gold pieces worth of treasure in the dungeon. Also layer the theme on the treasure, if it makes sense.
- Roll 1d6, and on a 6 add a magical item. Riff off theme too.
- If you don’t feel 6 rooms is enough, do it all again, with a new theme. Have the faction in the second section conflict with the first. Rinse and repeat until you feel like it’s big enough. I’d estimate one of these would last a session or two.
Please submit your zungeon here, so that we have a place where all the zungeons exist. I can't wait to see your zungeons!
Nova
P.S. Remember, I'll review any zungeon you send me a download link to, if you ask (I won't if you don't ask; you mightn't want your zungeon reviewed). You can find me on Bluesky, Discord, or at my blog (here!)