Well, another ‘ramblings’ post, a fight club article coming soon!
There are many Dungeon Generators, like this one. To be honest, I have never used any of them and I don’t intend to. Let me tell you why I think such utilities are almost useless in RPG.
I guess it depends on what you want from role-playing games, what kind of entertainment you expect. If you want senseless hack&slash - use them, they are for you. But again, why don’t you play Diablo II? However, if you want something more complicated than smashing dozens of doors, you just won’t have fun in a randomly generated dungeon.
Biggest advantage of such generators is also their biggest drawback. The dungeons generated are completely random. This means they can’t include any special treasures, magic riddles and important NPCs.
If you think I am wrong, generate a random dungeon and play it with your players. Then, prepare a dungeon of similar size yourself. Then ask the players which one they liked more. I think you can imagine what the answer would be. A dungeon made by yourself will always be of better quality, than the one generated.
Despite everything I said above, there are some advantages of such generators.
Firstly, you takes no time to prepare such dungeon. You just have it, ready to play. If your players really like hack&slashes, or you are a newbie and want to fight and explore, not go intocomplicated plots, it is also for you.
Secondly, you can use a pre-generated dungeon and adept it to suit your needs. It is a good idea to use just the plan, the map and add treasure and enemies yourself.
That’s all for today. As always it only my opinion and you don’t have to agree in 100%, I don’t say this is the one and only way, RPGs are very flexible, you can play them the way you like.
Share your opinion in a comment!
Hey Michal.
I doubt many people use such dungeons fresh out of the generator. Personally, were I to use one of them, I could use the map but would likely ignore whatever monsters or such the generator throws in there if it even adds such.
One cool idea for a megadungeon is to first generate one map and when one border of that is reached to generate another and connect them with few passages and so forth. Add reasonable monster ecologies and societies into the randomly generated maps and you can have a good game with possible depth.
Never played anything like “megadungeon”, I have to to try it one day.