Dungeons

Exploring a dungeon is a dangerous undertaking, one that demands care, preparation, and courage. Ancient tunnels, desecrated temples, and forgotten ruins hide traps, monsters, and secrets that test the adventurers with every step.

Exploration Turns

In Trilhamarga , the time the characters spend exploring a dungeon is measured in exploration turns . One exploration turn is equal to 10 minutes within the game world.

Size

The dungeon size determines how many encounters the party must overcome before reaching the end of it. The larger the dungeon, the longer and more dangerous the exploration:

Complexity

The complexity defines how confusing, treacherous, or labyrinthine the dungeon is:

SIMPLE: A set of rooms and corridors with a direct, functional layout: wide passages, obvious doors, and few secrets.

INTRICATE: The dungeon features multiple paths, deceptive passages, and occasional traps that demand constant attention.

LABYRINTHINE: A tangle of interconnected tunnels and chambers, where every turn may hide a dead end, a concealed danger, or a threat to one's sanity.

Activity Level

The activity level indicates how alive and busy the dungeon is: how many creatures inhabit it, how alert they are, and how often new dangers arise:

Inhabitants

The GM should also decide what kinds of creatures live in the dungeon. The number of different types can vary according to the dungeon size , though this is not a hard rule.

The GM can use the values below as a reference:

Large dungeons may be home to several groups of individuals sharing the same environment. The GM should keep this in mind when choosing the creatures that dwell there.

Dungeon Encounters

Dungeon encounters can be drawn from a table or prepared in sequence by the GM . They should represent the challenges and obstacles the characters will face in the dungeon, as well as the opportunities and rewards associated with them.

Finally, the dungeon's last encounter should represent the ultimate obstacle before the party's final goal, usually involving a confrontation with a powerful creature, a dark ritual underway, or a deadly mechanism that must be disabled.

BLOCKED PATH: The way forward is barred: a sealed door, a collapse in the path, iron bars, or intricate riddles. The party must improvise, force it open, climb, or find another route. Seeking an alternate route reduces the dungeon progress by 1, but clearing the path yields 1d4 loot rolls .

DEAD END: The path the party was following simply ends: a room with no other doors, a winding corridor that leads nowhere, or an impassable chasm. Reduces the dungeon progress by 1.

EASY COMBAT: A small group of enemies or lesser creatures crosses the adventurers' path. The fight is quick, but still dangerous if the party is wounded or unprepared. Yields one simple loot roll for each player.

GUARDED OPPORTUNITY: The adventurers come across something that could help them: a healing spring, an altar that grants a blessing, or a cell holding a possible ally. But reaching it means crossing an immediate danger. No loot roll beyond the opportunity itself.

GUARDED TREASURE: A chest, reliquary, or ancient vault gleams in the gloom, but it is clearly guarded by a watchful creature, an arcane seal, or a deadly trap. Claiming the treasure requires cunning and nerve. Greed can come at a high price. Overcoming the challenge yields one treasure roll .

HARD COMBAT: The adventurers face organized, numerous, or especially strong enemies. It is a tense and risky confrontation. Perhaps an elite patrol, a golem, a necromancer, or a desperate band that fights to the end. Yields one loot roll for each player.

PERILOUS PATH: The party must cross a hostile environment: a narrow corridor over a chasm, a flooded room, or an unstable bridge. Seeking an alternate route reduces the dungeon progress by 1, but crossing the perilous path yields 1d4 loot rolls .

SAFE ROOM: A moment to breathe: an abandoned room, a silent temple, a forgotten shrine, or an undesecrated chamber. Here the characters can find a safe place to rest. The party may use a safe room to take a short rest without the need to set a watch. Yields 1d4 – 1 loot rolls .

TRAP OR SETBACK: The party springs a trap built to protect the place from intruders, or suffers an environmental setback such as a cave-in, a flood, or an alarm that betrays their presence. Getting past the trap or setback yields 1d4 loot rolls .

UNGUARDED TREASURE: Among rubble, ashes, or forgotten altars, the adventurers find an intact treasure: ancient coins, jewels, scrolls, or rare artifacts. No guardian protects it. A rare moment of direct reward amid the danger. Yields one treasure roll .

Exploring the Dungeon

To advance through the dungeon's corridors and chambers toward the next encounter , the characters must decide on the exploration approach the party will use.

Each approach reflects the adventurers' pace, care, and priorities among speed, safety, and looting:

CARELESS: The most common way of exploring. The party moves at a normal pace, mindful only of the essentials. It is the balanced option between risk and progress.

STEALTHY: The adventurers move in silence, avoiding noise and leaving as few traces as possible. The difficulty of the exploration challenge increases by +2 for each character in the party, but the next encounter counts as 2 toward the dungeon progress.

METICULOUS: The party advances slowly, examining doors, walls, inscriptions, mechanisms, and traces. The encounter immediately following a meticulous exploration counts as only half toward the dungeon progress.

Once an approach has been chosen, the GM should roll for the time the characters spend exploring the dungeon before reaching the next encounter :

The total number of exploration turns spent reaching the next encounter should be modified by the dungeon's activity level .

Exploration Challenge

To determine whether the party suffers any setback during exploration, the characters make a exploration challenge .

A exploration challenge is a skill challenge , with difficulty based on the dungeon's complexity , in which each person involved must describe how they contributed to the exploration and use a relevant skill:

If the party succeeds, the characters reach the next encounter without any setbacks . Otherwise, the GM chooses or rolls a setback from the list below:

In either case, the party may make loot rolls , according to the exploration approach chosen to reach the next encounter , to represent the items found along the way:

Finding a Shortcut

Searching for a shortcut while exploring the dungeon increases the difficulty of the exploration challenge by +6. On a success, the next encounter counts as 2 toward the dungeon progress. Otherwise, that encounter does not count toward the dungeon progress.

Resting in the Dungeon

While inside a dungeon, the party cannot take long rests and can only take short rests if they find a safe room or if one of the PCs stands watch in a room that is not safe.

Safe rooms can be found naturally while exploring the dungeon, but if the characters want to actively search for one, they must make a exploration challenge . On a success, they manage to find a safe room. Otherwise, they run into a random encounter that does not count toward the dungeon progress.

Alternatively, a member of the party can stand watch to let the others rest in a room that is not safe. To do so, the character on watch must make a Perception check with difficulty based on the dungeon's activity level :

On a success, the rest of the party can take a short rest . Otherwise, the party's rest is interrupted by combat.

Abandoning the Dungeon

If they want to leave a dungeon without having fully explored it, the characters must make a exploration challenge .

On a success, they manage to leave the dungeon without any setbacks . Otherwise, they run into a encounter that does not count toward the dungeon progress.

Once that encounter has been overcome, they can make another attempt to leave the dungeon.

If the party abandons a dungeon, it is up to the GM to decide how much exploration progress is lost, according to what makes the most sense for the situation.

The Final Encounter

The final encounter is the last and most challenging obstacle before the goal, putting to the test everything the adventurers have achieved. It could be a confrontation with a guardian, the interruption of a ritual, the disabling of an ancient artifact, or an escape from a collapse.

The Dungeon's Reward

Upon overcoming a dungeon's last encounter , the party receives a special reward. To determine what the reward is, roll 1d12, add the dungeon's number of encounters, and consult the table below:

Dungeon Ideas

The GM can use the ideas below to build or improvise their own dungeons as needed.

Classics

THE GOBLIN CAVE: A network of natural caves infested with goblins who steal livestock and prey on travelers. Full of crude traps and random items that most people would consider garbage.

THE ABANDONED MINE: An old dwarven or human mine, now occupied by kobolds or giant spiders. Rusty mine carts and bottomless pits are a must.

THE CITY SEWERS: A labyrinthine network of damp tunnels beneath the city. Giant rats, oozes, and thieves' guilds tend to hide down here.

THE FORGOTTEN CRYPT: A small mausoleum in a graveyard that leads to lower levels. Skeletons, zombies, and a necromancer at the end.

THE BANDIT FORT: A watchtower or small ruined castle occupied by outlaws. The focus is combat against intelligent humanoids.

THE TAVERN CELLAR: It starts as "clear out the rats," but a false wall reveals a complex of smugglers' tunnels or a secret cult.

Ancient Ruins and Lost Civilizations

THE ANCIENT DWARVEN CITADEL: Great stone halls, cold forges, and geometric architecture. Now home to orcs or goblins who defile the sacred halls.

THE SERPENT TEMPLE: Ruins in the jungle or a swamp, dedicated to reptilian gods. Nagas, constrictor snakes, and poison traps are essential elements.

THE TOMB OF THE GOD-KING: Egyptian in style, full of cursed hieroglyphs, mummies, and guardian constructs.

THE SUNKEN CITY: Partially flooded coastal ruins. Sahuagin, swamp beasts, and the constant threat of drowning.

THE ZIGGURAT OF BLOOD: A structure of ancient sacrifices atop a mountain or at the heart of a desert, haunted by the ghosts of its victims.

Magical Places

THE MAD MAGE'S TOWER: Rooms that defy geometry, staircases leading nowhere, chimeras, and magical experiments gone wrong.

THE ALCHEMIST'S LABORATORY: Full of acids, artificially created oozes, homunculi, and golems.

THE CULT SANCTUARY: An unholy site hidden behind an ordinary facade (such as a church or a mansion), where cultists try to summon a demon or cosmic horror.

THE PLANAR PRISON: A dungeon built not to keep people out, but to keep something terrible in. Bars of cold iron and circles of protection.

Natural or Elemental

THE HARPY/GRIFFON NEST: Caves atop needle-like peaks. The main danger is falling and vertical combat.

THE GIANT INSECT HIVE: Tunnels of earth and resin with giant ants or bees. The horror comes from the overwhelming number of enemies and the alien structure.

THE ACTIVE VOLCANO: Lava tunnels, fire elementals, salamanders, and dragons. The heat is a constant environmental hazard.

THE CRYSTAL/ICE CAVE: Slippery floors, sharp stalactites, yetis, and creatures of ice. The light reflects in strange ways, causing illusions.

THE CORRUPTED GROVE: An open-air "dungeon," where the trees are the walls and their roots sometimes try to strangle the adventurers. Malevolent dryads and corrupted treants.

THE BEAST'S LAIR: A simple but enormous cave that serves as the home of a single magnificent predator (such as a Dragon, Hydra, or Eye Tyrant) and its servants.

Bizarre

THE AMUSEMENT PARK DUNGEON: Created by a bored mage purely to test adventurers. Full of puzzles, magic mirrors, and shifting rooms.

THE MEGADUNGEON: A colossal complex with dozens of levels, internal factions, and its own ecosystem. Exploring it could be the goal of an entire campaign.

THE FALLEN SPACESHIP: Metallic corridors of alien architecture. Robots, lasers, and technology the characters believe to be magic.

THE INVERTED DUNGEON: A tower that grows downward into the earth, or an upside-down pyramid floating in the sky.

THE MINOTAUR'S LABYRINTH: A literal, magically shifting maze, where navigation is the main challenge.

THE HELLMOUTH: A cave that descends so deep it begins to merge with the lower planes. Demons, devils, and unbearable heat are the challenge.

THE LICH'S CASINO: Or a subterranean black market. A place where combat is not the first option, but rather negotiation with intelligent and dangerous creatures.