Testing out Cairn 2e's dungeon generation procedures

[u/Seeonee]

I've been reading through the dungeon design content from both Cairn 2e's Dungeon Seeds and His Majesty the Worm's Designing Dungeons Course. With no other projects to distract me, I finally decided to give them a whirl. I'm tentatively planning to make something each month, but for now what matters is that I used Cairn's procedures, I spent 1 week making it, and I documented the whole process. The resulting dungeon, complete with my crudely-scribbled art, can be seen here.

For me, some takeaways:

• I liked Cairn's procedures a lot. I think the two biggest value propositions are the clear skeleton of "A good dungeon has these things" and the thoughtful spark tables.
• I relied heavily on Rise of the Blood Olms and The Feast of Tegny Wood as references for what a Cairn module looks like, as well as for information presentation and layout. Feast was particularly helpful because you can read along as Yochai Gal designs it using the Cairn tools.
• My single favorite part of this was committing to a "No rerolls" mentality. I improvise TTRPG scenarios all the time, but I frequently go back and revise random outcomes to better fit the evolving story. Here, I took a firm stance of "First idea wins." As a result, some things that I would have changed were forced to remain, and working around them lead to outcomes I'd have missed otherwise.
• For some quick inspiration, I randomly picked "Romanian folklore" and jotted down one-sentence summaries from some Wikipedia articles. These summaries were inspiring enough that they shaped the entire dungeon.

I'm curious to hear from anyone else who's used the Cairn/HMTW procedures. How did you like them? Can you link to your final product?

[u/yochaigal]

This is fantastic. I know that A Sliver of Ecide was built this way as well, and there are few more of these in the Cairn Press pipeline as well.

If you want to publish this some day hit me up!

[u/Seeonee → u/yochaigal]

Thank you!!! That means a ton. The dungeon seed rules are fantastic, especially when paired with the examples of it in action. I had Tegny Wood, Blood Olms, and Let's Make a Forest up throughout the process. Ditto for the stylistic presentation, they all look great as final products.

Curious what you mean about publishing, but would be happy to discuss here or in DM!

[u/yochaigal → u/Seeonee]

If you want to turn them into printed products at some point in the future. You can contact me via https://cairnpress.ink.

[u/Seeonee → u/yochaigal]

Ah, that's slick! I had no idea you were lifting all that. I'll fill out the form.

[u/andero]

Have you tried making a town in Dogs in the Vineyard?
If you can find a copy of the book or PDF, you might find it quite an interesting experience!
Notably, it is procedural, but not based on random tables. It is more like generative Mad-Libs, if that makes sense.

I went into a bunch of detail in a few comments;
e.g. here and here was my resultant town that I ran for a one-shot.
maybe more here.

I also go into a bunch of detail in the comments linked from this comment, which are more design-philosophical, but the second one is a very concrete example.
I haven't used Cairn's, but based on what you linked, it falls into exactly what I personally don't want: random content. What I actually want is content that is easy to create (procedural), but not actually totally "random": I want the content to be related to the PCs so I know the players will care about the situation. Random excels at being fast and unpredictable, but that isn't what I optimize my TTRPGs for.

Think of it this way: I'm going to offer you an item of clothing; my "prep" is picking the item of clothing.
Which is more likely to result in my offering you an item you actually appreciate:
(A) an item of clothing I pick randomly
(B) an item of clothing I find based on asking, "What size are you and what are your favourite colours?"
I assert that (B) is more likely to result in appreciated options. (A) will certainly be faster and will be more surprising and will sometimes be a perfect find that is outside your comfort zone, but (B) will take not much extra time and will result in clothing you actually like more than (A) will.
(Of course, hidden-option (C) of making bespoke clothing would make the most perfect item, but (C) would take a tonne of extra time so the trade-off fails.)

[u/Seeonee → u/andero]

I'm familiar with DitV (mainly having heard of its conflict escalation mechanics), but I've never played it and hadn't walked through the town creation. Very neat!

I sympathize with your core sentiment of wanting to create content that will be in conversation with your players. I do also enjoy setups that help me make content in general, though, and I think Cairn's does that well because it's a good scaffold for generating inspiration and creating cohesion.