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Howling Tower: Cardtography

By Steve Winter Feb 1, 2017 | Articles, Howling Tower | 4 comments

Cardtography: The Basics

Since the introduction of computer
RPGs, randomly generated dungeons
are everywhere. Software developers
prefer to call them procedurally
generated rather than random
because they aren’t truly random;
they’re created according to a rigid
procedure. Developing a procedure
that spits out satisfying dungeons is a
popular problem among
programmers, and the web is full of
fascinating blog posts about the many
approaches people have found for solving it.

Procedures for generating dungeons randomly are, however, much older than
personal computers. The first substantial paper-and-dice random dungeon
generator I’m aware of is the one created by Gary Gygax and published in
Volume 1, Issue 1 (Spring 1975) of Strategic Review. It was later republished
with only minor changes in the original DMG. Hundreds more followed in the
decades since.

The process of randomly generating a dungeon is amazing when it works well.

This can be a game—or a gamelike activity, anyway—all by itself. I’d wager
that most of you have spent hours creating dungeons with geomorphs,
random tables, and heaps of dice just for the joy of seeing what comes out.
Even the person who created the procedure can be surprised by the results
despite knowing all the possibilities beforehand. The key is in the unexpected 2
combinations and the fact that a dungeon is more than the sum of its parts.

At first glance, randomly generating a dungeon seems easier than purposely

designing every aspect of it, but that’s true only if the procedure already
exists. Designing a ten-room dungeon is less work than creating a system for
generating an infinite number of ten-room dungeons—trust me. The savings
come in bulk; if you foresee the need for an infinite number of ten-room
dungeons, or even just a lot of them, then creating a system is more efficient
than hand-crafting each dungeon individually.

The best of both worlds is when someone else creates the system. All you
need to do is learn how to implement it.

My goal in this series of articles isn’t to put forward the ideal dungeon
generator, whatever that might be. It’s not to put forward the most
comprehensive, the most flexible, or the one that’s most likely to please
everyone. It’s to put forward a generator that’s easy and FAST to use. One that
doesn’t require a lot of materials, cross-checking pages of tables, or even
drawing a map. Instead of using tables and dice, it uses a standard deck of 52
playing cards (54 when the jokers are included, which they sometimes are)
and plenty of six-sided dice. One of those plastic boxes of 36 12mm dice is
perfect, but any d6s will do.

This system is fast enough to use on the fly in the middle of a game session. It
could be used by a solo player or by a group without a GM. When a GM is
involved, it still pays to create the dungeon ahead of time and do some critical
thinking about how it can be improved and made more logical (not
necessarily the same thing). But if you need a dungeon NOW for a no-prep
game session or to kill some time in solo exploration, this will do the trick.

The dungeons this system produces are somewhat abstract. It doesn’t actually
draw corridors between rooms, for example, but only indicates that a
connection of some sort exists. That connection might be a simple doorway or
it might be a lengthy corridor. We’ll explore that subject more in a later article;
don’t get hung up on it just yet.

This first article introduces the basic procedure for laying out the cards and
for generating connections between them. Next week, we’ll delve into what’s
actually in those chambers.

Layout
Start by shuffling the deck. Deal out 25 cards, face down, in the 5-by-5 pattern
shown in the illustration.

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The card at the bottom center of the layout is the entrance; or, if you’re laying
this out in front of players at a table, the entrance could be the middle card in
the top row, where it will feel more natural to players. The illustrations
assume the entrance is at the bottom, but as you’ll quickly see, any card could
kick things off.

Flip the entrance card face-up to show that it’s been entered and explored.

Connections
We need to locate paths that connect the explored card to adjacent cards and
lead farther into the dungeon. To do that, roll three six-sided dice.

Now imagine that the faceup card is a dial with 1 at the top, 2 at the upper
right, 3 at the lower right, etc., as shown in the illustration. Place the dice you
just rolled around the card in the positions that correspond to their numbers;
a die that rolled 1 goes at the top, a die that rolled 2 goes at the upper right,
etc. If two dice rolled the same number, return one of them to the spare dice
pool. Doubles mean this room has only two exits instead of three; ignore one
of those dice and return it to the spare dice pool. Triples mean it has only one
exit.

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If a die turned up 4, place it at the bottom of the card to mark the entrance. If
a 4 wasn’t rolled, place a spare die there anyway, as a reminder.

In our example, the first room (9 of spades) has an entrance at 4 and two
other doors at 1 and 6.

Let’s assume our explorers move through the door at 6. The card it leads to
gets flipped face up (revealing the 2 of diamonds), indicating that room has
been entered, and you roll three more dice to locate exits. This time, the rolls
are 2, 3, 6. Placing the dice around the card to mark those locations, we see
that position 3 is already occupied by the door from the first room (6). That
die gets returned to the dice pool and doors are marked at positions 2 and 6,
as in the illustration.

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Continue in this fashion, moving from one card to the next, to map the entire
dungeon. Follow these rules to answer the inevitable questions.

1. Other than the entrance, dice that indicate a door leading out of the
dungeon are ignored; return them to the dice pool. If doubles indicate a door
out of the dungeon, however, then that location holds a hidden or previously
unknown passage back to the surface.
2. Dice that indicate a door where there’s already a door are ignored and
returned to the dice pool.
3. Dice that indicate doors into previously explored but unconnected
chambers raise the question, “why didn’t we see this door from the other
room?” These dice can be handled in one of four ways. Option 1 is to ignore
that result and return the die to the dice pool, the same as if it was a double.
Option 2 is to treat that result as a one-way door or magic portal that can only
be opened from the current room. Option 3 is to assume this door is obvious
from the current room but cleverly concealed from the opposite side; now
that you know it’s there, it can be opened from either side. Option 4, which is
suitable if you’re mapping the dungeon ahead of time instead of generating it
on the fly during a game session, is to add the new door to the layout the
same as any other and move on.
4. Keep adding doors until all the cards are flipped face-up or until every path
has hit a dead end. If every path dead-ends while some cards are still face
down with no connections, those cards are removed. They’re not part of the
dungeon.
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Using these rules to finish our example dungeon leads to the layout shown in
illustration 5.
Variations
This simple layout procedure provides plenty of opportunities for variations.

1. Cards can be arranged however you like, not just in a five-by-five layout. A
grid of 25 cards produces a dungeon about the right size for an evening’s
exploration or a worthwhile side trek. A layout smaller than nine cards tends
to be dull, especially if more than a few cards wind up being unreachable.
Seven-by-seven is the largest square arrangement possible with one deck of
cards, but an arrangement can also be rectangular, ovoid, or asymmetrical—
or it can use more than one deck of cards.
2. The entrance doesn’t need to be along an edge. If the entrance is through
the ceiling via stairs or a pit, or via a portal, it can open into the dungeon
anywhere.
3. Instead of laying out the entire grid beforehand, cards can be dealt into
position from the deck as they’re needed. You can predefine the limits of the
dungeon or let it sprawl wherever the dice dictate.
4. A door that’s indicated by doubles is trapped, locked, jammed, or
obstructed in some other way.

Next: What’s in this dungeon?

4 Comments
Robert F on February 2, 2017 at 12:18 pm