If you’ve ever been asked to run a public game at the last minute, it’s best to have a generic dungeon handy. Here’s one, download and use at will.
While on a flight to a convention one day I realized that I didn’t have a dungeon ready. I scribbled this quickly, and used it. This has proven flexible and entertaining enough that I’ve used it at least 30 times since, making everything up on the fly. It’s my standard ‘dungeon crawl’ for Original D&D Games (Level 2 characters).
So what’s In it?
Whatever you like, scaled to match the party. Make it up as you go along (just like in 1974).
Here are some few of the dozens of bits I’ve used:
Entry: Graffiti from previous visitors (containing clues if you search)
First Room: Debris in corners… including animating skeletal bits. (Possibly including cigarette butts and McDonald’s wrappers, if you like the humour element.)
Lower right corner: An ogre lair, possibly two (male & female, possibly preoccupied).
Lower left corner: Big alien in chair (original Alien film), but just a dead giant — whose corpse is full of bats and pests.
First rooms north (L/R): Things-are-not-what-they seem. Vampires quietly sleeping (just zombies), other tricky ideas, all low-challenge
Top left: Defenders with a double ballista aiming down the long hallway at the PCs invaders, placed to guard the side rooms (heavily protected vaults of loot, or pet dinosaurs, or…)
Top Center: The finale! Dozens of goblins, with hobgoblin guards, having a religious ceremony. You might break in thru secret doors behind the high priest; you might charge in from the entrances. Good news: Most are unarmed (church service). Iffy news: Armed guards and the High Priest (spells etc). Worst news: They worship a table with a boar’s head strapped onto it — and it can animate. (They call it TUSK, and I cue the drum-beat song by Fleetwood Mac…) This ends in a punchline (how do you fight an animated table when you have no magic weapons?), but I’m not revealing that here.