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An Automatic Dungeon Generator

Automatic dungeon generators are rubbish. Some are pretty, but all of them are completely unusable.

You enter a room, it has a goblin, or treasure, or nothing. Next room.

It makes no sense. Why was the goblin sitting there? Why was there treasure in the next room, and why didn’t the goblin take it? Everything looks like 8am after an underground rave - pointless, meaningless, and with random items and stragglers lying about.

I’ve made a new one here[a]. It’s also rubbish, but for different reasons.

[a]

It starts with how a dungeon exists - could be a mine, or a natural cavern. This brings natural chasms, stalagmites, silver-seams, and various other features.

Then it creates a race to move in. Elves and gnomes make libraries, dwarves have a runemaster’s room and shrines to the dead. Everyone must build a bridge over rivers which block the path, and most will create a kitchen, and living quarters.

Finally, tragedy occurs as invaders move in. Perhaps a necromancer replaces the dwarves with ‘undead dwarves’, or a dragon comes in, with goblins who worship her.

The resulting map is purely conceptual - it just has relations between rooms, rather than creating a real map.

To Do

I still need to have it generate room descriptions, and perhaps one day someone who knows who to code properly could add images. I’ve commissioned some generic dungeon tiles, so maybe that will help.