How to Use Dungeon A Day
Since Dungeon A Day is system-neutral, you may be a little surprised by the format I've chosen to use in providing each Dungeon Room's Features.
Instead of finding stat blocks, enemy levels, CR's (challenge ratings), and the like for each Dungeon Room, you'll find a description of the room, the room's challenges, and resulting damages from the dungeon room. Resulting damages often includes a % loss to the party of the group's total HP.
For example:
- Room Description
You enter the room, looking out across a purple, darkly-lit space, from a raised platform.
- Room Challenges (See the "Reference & Icons" section below)
- Statue Guardians: "Statue Guardians" block the start of each safe pathway across the gaping chasms. They attack anyone who comes within 1Range of them, or who first attacks them.
- Enemy Stats
Skeletons: HP (25% of party Avg. each), Attack (same as party), Initiative (same as party), Defense (same as party)
(Older, Beta Versions: - Resulting Damages)
The party should take 10% of their total HP in damage from fighting.
Enemy Stats
Dungeon A Day is system-neutral. As you know, a system-neutral setup takes away actual stat blocks from the dungeon, specific spells, specific items, and more. If you're the DM for your group, it leaves you with an outline, but not enough to run the adventure as-is.
So, my way of working around this is by providing you the Enemy Stats section to each dungeon room. At the start of the dungeon, simply add up the entire party's total HP and divide by the number of players (giving you the average of each player's HP). Whenever an enemy says that they have (25% of the party Avg.), you know that each monster should have 25% of that average value you just calculated.
For Example: if the entire party together has 160HP, and there are 4-player characters, the party Avg. HP is 40. So, if a monster has 25% of the party average (which is 40 in this example), then that monster should have 10HP.
Similarly, if the party roughly has +5 hit chance to attacks, and deals 1d0 damage, then the monster should have about the same. This also applies to defenses and initiative.
Adjust Rooms Based on How the Party's Doing
Gauge how well your group is doing. If they're facing an equivalent number of enemies to the number of player characters in the group, and each of those enemies has 25% of the party Avg. then you can assume that the party should lose no more than 25% of their total combined HP (for all characters).
If the party takes more damage than that, consider making the next encounter easier, to compensate. Similarly, if the party trashes dungeon rooms with ease, consider making the next room a bit harder.
Difficulty for Spells, Skills, and More
Within the dungeon, you'll encounter a number of spells, abilities, skill checks, knowledge checks, and more that have a difficulty assigned to them. These difficulties are categorized into "Easy" (75% success rate), "Medium" (50% success rate), "Difficult" (25% success rate), etc. They are in place to provide you an idea of how to customize the encounter, based on the game you're playing, your party's level, and additional factors.
Note that the % chance of success is always from the perspective of the players. That is, if for example they're attacked by a magical spell that's "Difficult," they will have a (25% resist rate).
Why Does Dungeon A Day Not Fully Design the Encounters?
When I create dungeons for my own group, I - of course - fully design all of the dungeon rooms and encounters contained therein. So, why do I not provide you with all of those fully designed encounters? Why did I leave all of that out, and opt for a system-neutral approach with Dungeon A Day?
Well, there are many reasons.
A System-Neutral Setup Allows Dungeon A Day to be Useful to More Players
If I specifically set up Dungeon A Day to be used with DnD 5th edition (for example), that would obviously leave out a lot of people who play other RPGs. But also, think about what happens when D&D Next comes out. It would leave me with the task of re-creating all of the dungeons for the new D&D version. Plus, with every new D&D edition, some players move on to what's new, while others prefer what came before.
The result?
We would end up having versions for every Dungeon A Day dungeon for D&D 5th edition, D&D next, plus whatever other TTRPGs are most popular. For the relatively small Eternity TTRPG team, that's simply too much for us to handle.
Not Providing Stat Blocks Allows You More Flexibility with Dungeons and Player Levels
Since each dungeon does not come with a designated player level or CR (challenge rating), it means that you can play any dungeon you like with your gaming group, at any time. Find a dungeon you like? Great - go ahead and use it! You don't need to worry about whether or not the dungeon will fit your party's current level.
This also means that you can play dungeons out of order. You can pick and choose specific dungeon rooms that you like, and incorporate them into your game or campaign anyway you like. You can also be pretty sure, with some prep work of your own, that your dungeon will almost always be very well-balanced for your group in terms of difficulty.
Have Feedback on Dungeon A Day?
My goal is to create great dungeon-based resources for you to use with your gaming group. Have feedback on the current Dungeon A Day format or content? Please Contact Us and let us know what you love, and what could be improved.
