Ten Dungeon Archetypes to Inspire Adventures in Dungeons and Dragons 5e 

the best megadungeon i've seen is Hallownest. It's got a tomb, it's got multiple military fortifications, it has a couple religious sites devoted to the king, it's got natural caves, a sewer, an underground city with an even more underground palace below it, a mine in the mountains, and the whole premise of the game is to keep one character imprisoned! it literally has everything you could ever want from a dungeon and more.

I love the "Wilderness Dungeon" as laid out in the book Into the Wyrd and Wild. A giant and inhospitable forest with locations connected by trails has a lot in common with a conventional dungeon, but there are no walls to ensure your safety.

Another Dungeon that's pretty interesting is the Mansion and Grounds. It's almost like a microcosm of a bunch of all these other locations: it can have gardens and outdoor locations like hedge mazes, hallways of guest rooms, libraries, dining halls and kitchens, servants quarters, and other rooms depending on what their owner likes to do with their time.

The Ship, or Shipwreck, is an interesting additional option. The simplest case is an ocean ship crashed on rocks so that part is submerged and part above the water. It has been colonized by various creatures and a clan of aquatic folk. A large ship docked at a port could have a dungeon-like flavor. A crashed spelljammer needn't be near water. What about an actual starship? Metamorphosis Alpha was essentially DnD in space; the setting was a giant colony ship sailing through space where something had gone wrong and the place was full of mutants. The Spider Ship of Lolth in Q1 was another early example.

So, Kelly was right about Dungeon/ Don Jon, but for anyone wanting more details: The Don Jon (spelling is probably way off. I don't speak french) was, as he said, the highest room in the tallest tower. It was often used as a final point of defense for the local lord because it was so hard to attack. However, it was also extremely hard to escape from, so more and more began using it as a prison. When prisons were moved underground, Don Jon, or dungeon, moved with it

I’m a bit sad this didn’t make any mention of “living dungeons.” They’re a bit niche, but I love the idea of them.

I just had an idea for a Dungeon. Basically an underground excavation cite where two industrial companies one run by dwarfs and the other by Goblins are competing to find the next piece to the mcguffin. Holy crap. I just came up with an interesting dnd campaigns. Thanks Dungeon Dudes.

One that I often use for tombs is that it will become increasingly apparent to the players that the traps and hostile constructs and the like are there to keep the inhabitants of the tomb IN the tomb, works especially well as a plothook for a lower level party to set up a mid to high level boss for later. Another example of a buried city is something like seattle, portland or newyork, where the city has just been built overtop of itself so many times that there is a literal buried city beneath the streets.

The classic wizard's tower is one of my all-time favorite archetypes for a dungeon. It allows you to experiment with crazy architecture that defies physics, fantastic creatures or enemies, and puzzles that only make sense to the wild-eyed mage who thought them up in the first place. It can be a lot of fun. And it gives the DM very few restrictions, which can really allow your imagination to breathe.

I used to be so proud of coming up with my own dungeons, but now that I run D&D with like 3 megabytes of mental RAM I am very thankful for all the inspirational help I can get One place I like to look for inspiration is the layout and Design thought processes behind video game maps, like levels from Halo or Counterstrike

You guys talking about the mega dungeon after the research center made me realize that the titular Halo from Combat Evolved is a mega dungeon, and the mission the Flood are released is a great example of a research center-prison dungeon. I'm really tempted to add something along those lines to my campaign. I already had a Last of Us style fungus introduced as a wood elf bioweapon, it would be awesome to have that mutate on its own and have a dungeon revolving around new monsters formed from it, and gelatinous cubes released to cleanse the facility.

I believe in the section about caverns, the idea was mentioned of buildings hanging down from the ceiling of a massive cave. The idea that I had based on that is that the lowest-hanging tower of the structure is right above a mysterious underground lake. What's in there? A subterranean leviathan? A high-pressure bed of rare crystals? Claustrophobic sunken passages leading to yet further mystery?

A random side note - it's funny how perceptions of castles differ among countries. For Americans and Canadians, they're a fantastical location of legend from far overseas; for Europeans, they're historic but not even slightly fantastical or amazing, both ruined and extant ones seen fairly often so no-one treats them as more special than any other historic building. Somewhat similarly for Japanese. Industrial sites working on industry justified with magic are underappreciated as dungeons. I know Monty takes inspiration from Fallout as well - recall just how many remarkably great dungeons every Fallout game has that are simply familiar industrial sites, both changed by the events after their abandonment and completely intact. Another underappreciated dungeon concept is not technically an underground dungeon or building, but a deep dense nature area. Jungle green hell or dense fey forests or druidic sites, good or evil. Dense growth can shape it easily into corridors and room-like clearings and recesses, particularly when magic is involved and choked the surroundings with something that only leaves some paths open. I like the kind of megadungeons that aren't "meta" fourth-wall-leaning ones but natural-feeling ones. Raging Swan Press/Creighton Broadhurst's Gloamhold is a fine example - a colossal dungeon that doesn't feel like random flavour levels stacked on top of one another but a natural place with escalating danger layers. If you haven't been checking it out, make sure to do so, his style should be largely right up your alley.

I would like to add to the Prison the idea of a Collector. Much like the Marvel version. Someone very powerful bent on acquiring lots of unique creatures and objects. Each cage would be specially made, the security would be high, and the loot would be very special and good. The Collector itself would make for an excellent boss.

For your mention of sewer systems. I recommend to you the lovely city of Paris, which decreed that all Parisian sewers would be inspection possible from the inside by a person. So yes, you actually CAN go through the sewers, though a rebreather is necessary (real sewer systems can straight up kill you with noxious gas). But the utterly bonkers part is not the man passable network of sewers... it's how they cleaned them. They literally used some straight up Indiana Jones, "rolling ball of doom" to rumble down the tunnel under poo hydraulic pressure, and smash anything that got in the way. Some of the tunnels were large enough for boat traffic. This system was installed in the 1860s, and is still in operation today. To include doom-balls.

For me one of the best inspirations for tomb turned dungeon is the tomb of the first Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang, the guy was obsessed with immortality (which ironically probably killed him), the tomb was said to have a garden with lakes and rivers of liquid mercury flowing trough it (which seems to be true as the archeological site is absolutely positively contaminated with the stuff) there are three pits with with containing the Terracotta Army that was estimated to have held held more than 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses, and 150 cavalry horses, the majority of which remained buried in the pits near Qin Shi Huang's mausoleum. Other terracotta non-military figures were found in other pits, including officials, acrobats, strongmen, and musicians. So turn the emperor into a lich, and instead of generic zombies have the terracotta soldiers containing the souls of an actual soldiers. Adding to the mix the souls of concubines and workers entombed there wit the emperor and you got real fun place to explore.

I created a prison dungeon that I think is pretty cool. It's set into the caldera of an inactive volcano, and it was created long ago by dwarf architects/wizards. There's a complex magical ward in place that keeps the volcano dormant, but if the prisoner locked in the deepest cell breaks out, the ward deactivates! Everyone in the complex has only a minute to evacuate before the "Broken Mountain" breaks once again and destroys the entire prison.

I don't know if it qualifies as a dungeon but I'm taking my group to the shadow fell for an echo of a forest battle that connects to an old campaign. They're going to come across the broken and dead woods of an elf village and find a green greatwyrm who lives in it and revels in it's destruction. It's going to feature alot of native monsters and even raise these dead elves as part of it's lair to defend it.

For the magical research lab, I think a brilliant protector would be a Steel Dragon, they don't remember the reason for why it was built, nor who built it. Now you could go a few ways: The steel dragon built it in a past life Someone the steel dragon cares for built it The possibilities are endless

Great timing dudes! Im working on a mega dungeon for my summer campaign that includes about half of these and this is so helpful.

This video made me so happy. Honestly I have been feeling massively disappointed with the dungeons in DUNGEONS & Dragons lately. Just feels like a long time since I really enjoyed a well-designed awesome dungeon. This video was really inspiring and makes me want to step-up the dungeons in the campaign I am DMing.

Lots of inspiration and ideas. Another great video as always. Thank you.

Great - now dungeons have character classes, too... I ran a few of _my_ dungeons through my mind, to see into which of the archetypes they fit and if I can find further archetypes. I found one, which I could _not_ readily categorize: an abandoned palace, basically a huge haunted house. I'd say it does have elements of the tomb, the military fortification, or the religious site, but I don't see a perfect fit into neither. Could the Haunted House be an additional archetype? Or wouldn't you even count it as a dungeon at all?

For the 'Buried City' you should absolutely check out the underground cities of Cappadocia in Turkey. Amazing. Miles and miles of tunnels able to house tens of thousands of inhabitants and their flocks carved out of the native tufa rock

Excellent insight! ... and Kelly, you had some Ash on your shirt. 😉

Another great vid guys! Giving me LOTS of fun ideas!

My first adventure with my current group intentionally included several different types of locations - A canyon, an abandoned farm, a cave, a tomb and a large forest, all to give the players a taste of just how much variation there can be in a D&D game. They loved that it never felt too samey

I'm planning out a campaign and have been binging these videos for all kinds of inspiration. You guys are absolutely awesome!!

I've been deciding a goblin infested dungeon that was used by templar knights that almost eradicated all goblin kind in ancient times. These templars were pious warriors and so the dungeon has living quarters, brewing quarters, holding cells for heretics, mess halls, caverns, hidden areas, mining areas in the lower level and more. Can't wait to deploy it

I'm just about to start a sewer dungeon that leads into a castle and somewhere else I haven't quite decided, so this was an amazing video to see! Thank you so much dudes!!

Nice channel guys! I've been watching , re-watching your campaign & the informative stuff you guys put out. I'm an old DM who started back in the 80s & I have to say I'm quite impressed with just about everything you have done so far! But in this video you left out one of my favorite archetypes, "the lost or hidden valley!" I wrote "the valley of the 6 winds" loosely based on the old 70s movie, "Island at the Top of the World." A hidden valley setting can be one of the most intriguing & long-playing settings. The potential for having a hidden valley tucked away for centuries from the outside world is IMMENSE. After a 30 yr hiatus I'm back DMing again & I'm finally going to run a group of characters thru it. I'm using photos of beautiful places around the world to give my players a full immersion into it. So cheers to you guys! How bout we do a video on "lost valleys" sometime? Thanks for your all's efforts! Steve C.

Hugely helpful / inspiring. Thanks, guys 👍

I played a fun one shot in a combo dungeon. A mining operation happened upon a lost temple, and the team was sent in to retrieve a magical artifact.

This looks like it's going to be one the best videos yet !

We need a video for best 3rd party wildshapes. Especially from tome of beasts 1 and 2

Oh man I've been waiting for the next video, this made my week!

Excellent, excellent. I love these DM- focused videos.

Thank you for doing these guides, Dudes, they are fun, informative and well made :D

My favorite dungeon archetype is underwater caverns. I love those darkmantles and cloakers and piercers. Its a vibe when you make them feel organic.

That HAS to be my favorite shirt I've seen in a while Kelly! Also stoked about this video since I'm very interested in crafting my first dungeons here soon!

These are all great ideas, thank you for this!

Dungeon dudes are the cure for DM writers block. Thank you guys

33:05 But Monty, I **am** running D&D for a group of scientists who do second guess every decision I make.

My favorite dungeon I've ever run (and I'm running it for the third time now) is literally an interdimensional massive craft of organic metal called "Illthraxxus". Gravity is weird, it's run by bug people of my own design, and it holds lots of mysteries and new wonders. I've run it as a way to jump from game setting to get setting, and as a way to explain the origins of certain species, and now finally as a "jailbreak". Sometimes the secret to a great dungeon is to break as many conventions as possible and keep the players guessing. When properly challenged, players can truly shine and earn their bragging rights.

How come your intro transition doesn’t have the sword going “schwing!” after you go “Let’s get rolling!” any more?

Just what I needed, thanks! How’s Drakkenheim going behind the scenes? Everything running smoothly? My players and I are very excited for the release of the book!

Can't wait for my Mega Dungeon known as Drakkenheim to arrive. Excellent content as always guys.

It's worth noting that any sort of tunnel system under a city is going to be a favorite place for cultists, criminals, and the like to hang out, be they sewers or catacombs, because they can often be accessed from multiple points in the city and are usually pretty safe from the prying eyes of honest folk.

Hey dudes! Thank you for that great insight on how to approach creating worlds. Your work is really inspiring and helps me becoming a better DM.

I really like "The Library" - A vast archive of knowledge, relics, and secrets that is so old that it has wings that have fallen into neglect. In my world, there is an inter-planar library that has entrances and exits throughout the world, and even whole floors of this library are in different times. You cannot enter the library without a librarian-guide, and you should have a specific piece of knowledge you want. Everyone entering the library should bring a secret to share with the library. On every level of the library there's an Index Stone. The Index Stone gives directions to the contents on the given level, or a map to the closest exit that leads to a level that will contain what you seek. If your guide dies, the party will become lost and cannot activate the Index Stones reliably. One feature of the Library is that you don't age conventionally in the library. I've had characters whose background is that they entered the library as refugees during a time of history when there was a vast cataclysm, but they meet the party in the modern era and their time happened centuries ago...

I recently used the random dungeon charts in the DMG and asked chatgpt to connect all of the random results. Ngl it was a lot of fun. Got some cool plot hooks out of seemingly disparate ideas. Great creative thinking exercise to bounce ideas off of that thing and get feedback from it

fun and instructive review of practical issues about how environments were created naturally and artificially - - essential for realistic immersion and verisimilitude

Just had to give an appreciation for Kelly's shirt. Evil dead is my favorite movie and it's what got me into fictional world lore in a type of way. Appreciate you guys

SUUUCH a good compilation of dungeon types. Question is, is it exhaustive? 🤔 Forest mazes or planar travel? I'd love to see part 2!

I have a good idea for prisons. Instead of rows of cells, it could be places of indentured servitude. After your arrested or captured your auctioned off to the wealthy and sent to work on a plantation or mine or something similar. You obviously need something to stop the wizard from immediately breaking out, but I find it a bit more interesting than a basic jail.

This is a GREAT video guys- you knocked it out of the park with this one! This is the kind of content I really like to spark my creative side!!

One of my favorite dungeon is the dwarven settlement where the dug too deep. Instead of freeing a balrog or other imprisoned monster, it opens up a major portal that randomly brings in creatures, both in groups and individually. This area, or the mines right above it, will become a king of the hill experience. The most powerful creature or group will become the caretaker of the portal, reaping the best treasures and eating the best food. Other creatures will continue up the mines, either looking for someplace they can call their own or attempting to escape. What this does is to stratify the dungeon, with the most powerful creatures/groups toward the bottom, and the less powerful creatures toward the top. Likewise, the treasures rank from amazing at the bottom to pitiful at the top. This is the best justification I've bee able to come up with for the classical D&D dungeon. Also, Derinkuyu Underground City

Amazing video! Super inspiring

One archetype that that I feel is often easily incorporated in any setting is the "Flooded District" type of area. This gives the alternative to use sea-based monsters in a non-naval campaign, as well as anything else you can think of. Perhaps a necromancer moved in for reasons of privacy and access to bodies(albeit bloated). Maybe the party needs to use rowboats to navigate the waterways, but can make use of buildings above water level or create boarded walkways between rooftops etc.

Holy shit this is something I absolutely love to see as a DM, thanks dudes!

I once made a bard’s crypt that was guarded by skeletons that used trumpets to blast air currents at my players. Yes they were doot doot skeletons and i’m not sorry.

This vid got me thinking about some of the cool locations in Skyrim.

As an engineer who runs a group with other engineers as my players, a bizare and unusual dungeon that makes no structural sense may also casue them to second guess if their actions will bring the mega-structure crumbling down. A hallway that any other group wouldn't have given half a brain cells thought took 15 minutes to clear, all because water was falling up.

Have used the Severs and Natural caverns in the campaign i run so far. :) and in the Severs the "underground" people (the major faction of thieves and smuglers) have a hideout with an intelligent Mimic as a door :D

I am currently working on an abandoned lab dungeon to let my players explore. It has the main aspect of Metroid Dread wherein there are a whole heap of various homebrew Iron Golems performing their last instruction to guard the place after an accident that left the lab uninhabitable, until the players arrive. The lab specialised in making experimental magic items and the golems were the guards of these creations. I plan on implementing various horror themes into this location and the inhabitants of it, like some of the golems silently crawling on the ceiling after the players it alerted to their presence.

One of my homebrew worlds first dungeons was a Necroplex, a theatre run by, and for, the undead

My favorite "dungeon" I made as DM was a ruined city converted into a bad guys military HQ, with makeshift traps, obstacles and fortifications layered onto the ruined yet still functional ones, think of a medieval version of WW2 Stalingrad. First I made the city, then ruined it and then layered on the makeshift stuff, a fun process for me. A lot of work but the payoff is a "dungeon" the players are free to approach from any direction and in anyway they choose. Watch their routines from a nearby hill? Sure. Scout the outer walls on a moonless night looking for a forgotten path in? Sure. The sewer had to drain somewhere, find it and try that way? Sure. Try the old "ambush a patrol and take their clothes" routine? Sure. Crash the front gate in broad daylight to really earn that TPK? Sure.

This is awesome!! Did you use a specific source or number of sources? I'd love to read them!

I have never DMed, and don't see myself doing it in the near future, but I like making this, and one thing I'm working on is a hombrew archedvil and his lair. He is basically the devil counterpart of Orcus, and his lair is this great fortress that also has this great factory beneath it that produces undead and necromantic magic items, as well as a research facility that try to invent new ones. I have named it Tombstone Fortress, after the fact that it looks like it's made primarily of tombstones, each bearing the name of an unfortunate soul the archdevil has claimed. It's still very early stages, but I think I got something very promising here. One thing I'm having some trouble decinding though, is location. I'm not sure which layer of Baator to put it on.

I´m pretty excited to make a dungeon using Kruthiks to blend in natural caverns with some Alien-themed scenery, thus bringing in some horror to the adventure.

Low rent wizard prison: regular cells, but the prisoners are gagged, blindfolded and have their hands greatly restrained to cut down on verbal and somatic components and line of sight. Should shut down MOST spells, but might be more effort than it's worth

This is good foundational advice, my homebrew world is still in its infant stage. Trying to get side quests for my PCs

One of the problems I had when adding the prison in my campaign was not making a magic seal. Through retroactive world building, it's due to the prison being far from a capital city and therefore not given the funding for a magic seal.

Well done men. Very nice video.

At the mention of conveyor belts, I immediately thought of using the maps from “Robo Rally” as D&D dungeons.

1. Industrial sight: copper mine where they struck diamonds, there is a cult of nerul trying to use the very small towns lax rules and transient population to their advantage, and a kruthic hive lord has moved into the lower levels bursting forth as the minners go deeper for the diamonds, a myconid colony lives in harmony (stealthily) with the kruthics and the xorn that has been drawn to the diamond vein to snack while an umber hulk stalks and picks off the kruthics and any hapless miners.

We're still waiting on those tortle monks and wise old rattling in drakkenheim Monty...

A dungeon based on Pompeii, that would be neat. Have an odd feeling of familiarity. Have things change very subtly every time your characters blink and have them struggle with morale.

This was really helpful

I think you guys missed a real world example that incorporates a number of these types. My favorite being the Colosseum in Rome. The surface level has the chambers and pathways of a sports stadium but below lies the prison like holding cells, as well as the business facilities of Gladiator owners selling their "property". Whether it's abandoned or active, this setting gives multiple opportunities for narrative as well as combat.

Ah, the industrial site. In my first oneshot the party engaged the boss in a dwarven magitech forge with mechanical hammers, anvils, pools of molten iron and all that fun stuff. They could've triggered them in a targeted manner to take out the mobs, but the rouge just "pressed all the buttons".... we got suprisingly close to two dead players (including the rouge, karma really is a b!tch). But it was really fun to play, easily the highlight of that session (admittedly not very difficult, but still...) xD

Really fantastic video.

Research laboratories were often times also religious sites. Take for example, the pea garden of Mr. Punnet, who developed the Punnet square and the modern understanding of genetics, who was a monk living at a monastery.

Nice! Don't forget the Haunted House!

Thanks for the content.

Love the TMNT reference. ". . . befriend a band of Tortle Monks."

Best example of a Megadungeon: Rappan Athuk. It's a self contained campaign delving into a very dangerous dungeon chock full of all manner of monsters.

You guys looking cool this year

An idea, based on a dungeon in Diablo 3. There is that cave, could also be a passage, that has been used by Lolth believer Drow as an above Underdark basis. It has since been abandoned, as the Drow were either killed when raiding other places, or some Drow converted to Eilistraee, abandoning Lolth. So the cavern, which had been partially remodeled to live in, has fallen to ruin and has been overrun by spiders, as the Drow that still live have long turned into Driders. Who could since then endanger the surrounding areas with their spider swarms. Mainly due to the Spiders growing in numbers, devouring the local wildlife while also widening their hunting range. The group that hires the adventurers would be some of the converted Drows, who fear the wrath of Lolth through their old comrades, as well as the Spiders killing everything else.. The mission would be to kill all the remaining Driders and as many of the Spiders as possible.

A great example of a sewer/tomb dungeon would be the Paris underground with the old catacombs and sewer system from the 19. century.

Diablo 1 makes for a good Tomb dungeon campaign, with some tweaks for the story. The dead started to come out this great tomb and wreak havoc, while weird dressed people were sneaking in. Initially only undead to fight, here and there are some cultist, and sometime deeper even Fiends start showing up.

What do you do with a dwarven culture with a large number of mages with shape rock who use it to fill wooden molds? Making stone blocks to sell while simultaneously mining.

Kelly looking like he woke up one day and decided emo/goth was the aesthetic of the day... and I am here for it. I love the jewelry. As always, thanks for the inspiration guys!

I want to make a mega fortification all focus around protecting a single room, the players would get some great loot along the way and (hopefully) wonder what can be inside the room. It will be the BBEG’s favorite kid’s toy he is keeping for his son

Course the harappan valley/indus had sewer and fresh water up to 5000 years ago so you can have advanced cities even when bronze was new and most parts of the world were relying on flint.

While watching this video, I kept waiting for you to talk about psychological dungeons or dungeons which take place in a PC's mind. I think a dungeon like this could really hook players into the game since the dungeon's content is sourced more intentionally from the PCs. Is this type of dungeon something you've touched on in another video?

"Unless you're playing with a bunch of scientists. engineers, and mathematicians" Currently in a group where that's all any of us are, and mostly we're all more interested in the story behind the environment, but it does make it so we do tend to ask questions about general spatial sensibility (so Strahd's Castle might get edited or smth) but other than that we're not nitpicky.

I love the books “The Worlds Largest Dungeon” and “The Worlds Largest City” from Alderac Entertainment

Hello. Am I blind or are there no links to Fables? Wanted to check em out! Thanks for the greatest of content. Your build a strong team has come in handy in my PVP arena. :D

21:00 "Sewage and aqueducts should be separated" thames in victorian times : *cris in colera outbrake*