
Dungeons Tome – Tool for generating dungeons for RPGs - _Zoran_
https://www.dungeonstome.com
======
erickhill
Very cool!

If you’re into this stuff -this one does cities (make your own Skara Brae):
[http://fantasycities.watabou.ru](http://fantasycities.watabou.ru)

This is one of the Big Dogs: [http://donjon.bin.sh/](http://donjon.bin.sh/)

It does worlds, dungeons, monsters (for different editions of the game),
quests, and a ton of other stuff.

~~~
lukev
As a DM, the #1 tool on my wishlist is a world generator like donjon's, but
zoomable (ala google maps) with reasonable procedural generation at levels
down to a few meters.

I recognize that this is a significantly challenging task, but hey, if Dwarf
Fortress can do it...

~~~
daheza
Wow this is something I never realized I wanted until now. Seems like it could
be a cool hackathon project, plus getting to learn more details about how
google maps / bing maps / openstreetmap do their zooming.

~~~
bendauphinee
I’ve played with a bare OSM server before to try and get an osm based map
working. Ends up you just have to scrub all the existing geometry and draw it
from scratch, but it’s so-able. Worst problem I had was trying to generate
realistic height map bit maps.

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drewry
Very cool, I especially like that it’s faithful to the DMG. I saw the mention
of Donjon, I’ve used the Donjon tools for years and have always loved using
them but felt the lack of persistence and interconnectedness was missing.

It’s why I’ve been working on something similar over the past few years and
dungeon generating is definitely on the roadmap. It’s called OpenDnD and it’s
attempting to be a complete set of open source DM and player tools. The first
5 tools are fairly useable but very much still beta. For those interested, the
code’s up on GitHub:
[https://github.com/opendnd/opendnd](https://github.com/opendnd/opendnd).

~~~
pure-awesome
Cool idea. Starring it to see where it goes.

Maybe I'll even contribute! ;)

Are you planning on adding support for other versions as well (for those
features where it matters), or will it just be 5e?

~~~
drewry
Awesome, contributors would be greatly appreciated :) I'm still working on
writing up the main roadmap (it's a very ambitious project) to make it easier
for new contributors. Currently, it'll be mostly focused around 5e although
I'd love to add support for other editions as well. Especially for things that
are highly useful to have support for like character sheets. But I see other
things like supporting older versions of the generators described in the DMG
will be a bit more difficult to do as it would require more fundamental
changes to the code.

~~~
pure-awesome
I'd like to know, though, are you aware of other Open Source D&D tools that
are available?

I had a quick peek on GitHub now, and it brought up:
[https://github.com/adventurerscodex/adventurerscodex](https://github.com/adventurerscodex/adventurerscodex)
[https://github.com/incomingstick/OpenRPG](https://github.com/incomingstick/OpenRPG)

So, is there any reason to roll your own from scratch rather than contributing
to one of the existing projects?

If it's to have your own project that you have complete control over, or if
it's just to do something fun yourself, that's totally cool. I'd just like to
know.

~~~
drewry
Great points, I'd be happy to give some background. I originally started
working on the project just for our DnD group about 5 years ago. At that time
there weren't many other projects available or if so I wasn't aware of them.
It was mostly Donjon and a few others that were available and none were built
as individual packages that could be composed together and weren't open
source. The GitHub org you see now is actually already a merger of existing
efforts that were started by other developers who were working on a character
sheet generator. The opendnd repo was only started recently as the tools have
grown over the years and needed a sort of all-encompassing project.

That being said, I'm aware that other projects are out there now that have
similar goals -- some further along than us as it's mostly been me working on
it in my free time. However, I would say that our design decision is pretty
different from the others in that each component is designed to be a separate
standalone tool that can be used as a component to build other things. Because
the end goal is so ambitious I think this design decision is critical if the
project is ever to get close to achieving that goal. If I had to summarize in
one sentence what we're trying to achieve, it's kind of a Dwarf Fortress level
of detail but fully open source and fully interconnected components.

~~~
pure-awesome
Great, thank you for this detailed response! It sounds interesting.

I'll pop you an email and we can continue discussion via a format better
suited for this kind of discussion.

------
nrjames
It's fun to poke around with map buildings and world building tools. Here's a
great list of map making resources:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/mapmaking/wiki/index](https://www.reddit.com/r/mapmaking/wiki/index)

And world building resources:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/wiki/reading_list](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/wiki/reading_list)

------
ggggtez
After examining the rules, there are many flaws.
[https://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/excerpts/excerpt_dmg4.pdf](https://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/excerpts/excerpt_dmg4.pdf)

The maps don't use any of the optional starting rooms, for starters.

All 45 degree options are missing, as are odd shapes, stairs, pits, etc,
resulting in ignoring or heavily modifying Tables II, III, III.B, V.A, V.E,
VI, VII, and VIII,.

The rules also specify that the dungeon must start with a stairs entering a
room, but it appears that this actually starts with a passage instead, which
doesn't appear to require entering a room immediately.

Example:
[https://www.dungeonstome.com/dungeon/345345345.png](https://www.dungeonstome.com/dungeon/345345345.png)
The entrance enters the room using a secret door, however there shouldn't be a
door between the entrance and the first room.

~~~
_Zoran_
You're looking at a different version of the DMG :) DungeonsTOME is based on
the DMG from 5e.

Although if there was enough interest, I might implement those rules minus the
dungeon dressing/encounters and some of the "unusual shapes".

~~~
ggggtez
Thanks for the clarification. Could you update the FAQ with a link to the
rules?

~~~
_Zoran_
I don't think the 5e rules are available publicly. If you can find a link
somewhere legit (such as wizards.com) then I'll happily put a link up in the
FAQ.

As for the older DMG rules that you have, I'll post them up if I end up
implementing that version. Otherwise I'll cause confusion :)

~~~
hithereagain
There is a System Reference Document for 5e available here:
[http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/systems-
reference-d...](http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/systems-reference-
document-srd)

~~~
_Zoran_
Possibly I'm being a bit blind, but I can't seem to find the dungeon creation
rules in there?

------
glangdale
I am curious as to how this avoids generating overlapping rooms. I actually
used this random dungeon generator back in the day, and there was nothing
about the algorithm that prevented one room from overlapping another, besides
'DM's Discretion'.

Of course, given how unworkable most of the rest of the DMG was if treated
strictly literally, patching the almost entirely unworkable outcomes that
result from literal readings of the DMG was pretty much the core Dungeon
Master skill.

~~~
glangdale
I am also looking forward to a future release of this, which will populate the
rooms based on the rest of the subtables. If I don't see a faithful
implementation of "TABLE VIII. C.: MAGIC POOLS" (e.g. roll 16-17 on a D20 and
get "Talking pool which will grant 1 wish to characters of its alignment and
damage others from 1-20 points.....") I will be _gravely_ disappointed.

~~~
_Zoran_
The plan is to populate the rooms in the future :)

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StavrosK
Good job, but the generator doesn't require a CAPTCHA for me. I click
"generate" without filling it out and it works.

~~~
_Zoran_
Thanks for pointing that out. I've hopefully fixed it now :)

------
pschastain
Went to check it out, and it requires you to jump thru Captcha hoops just to
use. I'm not going to spend time clicking on pics training some AI.

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adamc
The long hallways that don't end in rooms bug me; no one would build a
structure like that.

~~~
LanceH
The ground might be softer in one direction. There may have been something
worth mining out in a specific direction. Of course this only occurs
orthogonally in the real world :) The main point is that with mining a tunnel
is the natural structure and rooms would be unusual.

An empty hallway is great for storage and requires much less support than
building out a room. It could also be explained by venting or similar that
might not show up on a map.

~~~
mcguire
"Gettin' ready to carve out the Master Dining Hall and what do we find? It's
smack dab against a vein of mithril ore. You know what happens when you start
digging mithril, right? We ain't doing that for no union scale!"

I used to work at the old IBM buildings in Austin; there were a few halls that
went around a few corners only to dead-end. With a bunch of spare desks and
chairs piled against the end wall.

------
Heliosmaster
Very interesting! Any plans to open source the current code?

~~~
_Zoran_
Probably not. I'm sure I'd cause migraines if people were to see the code ;)

I'd probably open-source it before I abandon it though.

------
Null-Set
While not as suitable for actually playing tile based RPGs, I am partial to
[http://orteil.dashnet.org/experiments/dungeongenerator/](http://orteil.dashnet.org/experiments/dungeongenerator/)
for the nice visual design of the generated dungeons.

~~~
queuq
This is quite cool, do you know what license it's using? Seems to be
generating by JS? Could need this

~~~
Null-Set
It was made by
[https://twitter.com/Orteil42?s=17](https://twitter.com/Orteil42?s=17) .

------
indigochill
Ha, I was going to ask about Donjon and then found it listed in the FAQ. A
fine start. I think it has a way to go to feel competitive with the other
dungeon generators (such as Donjon's) out there for me personally, although I
guess the focus here is being reasonably faithful to the DMG?

~~~
_Zoran_
Thanks. Yes, originally I just wanted to use it in my D&D game. Since I
couldn't find another generator that used these algorithms, I thought I'd make
it available. But I'll probably add some other algorithms in due course.

What features would you like to see?

------
atomicstack
I like this one, it has more options and also features a JS-based offline
version:
[http://donjon.bin.sh/5e/dungeon/index.cgi](http://donjon.bin.sh/5e/dungeon/index.cgi)

------
legohead
If this isn't open source, I'd have labeled this as a SHOW HN. Also, I'd add
that to the FAQ :)

~~~
_Zoran_
SHOW HN?

I've added the answer to the FAQ :)

~~~
legohead
If you look at the top of HN there's a "show" link. It's a thing people do
here to show off something they have been working on. Not completely
necessary, and I don't think you should resubmit -- you already hit the front
page.

~~~
_Zoran_
Ah, cool, thanks :)

------
holografix
I love this! Sooo tempted to spend sometime building something similar with
the excuse of learning GOlang!

~~~
_Zoran_
Ha. I was thinking the same. I've heard lots of good things about Golang :)

------
_Zoran_
I've been asked if I can allow DungeonsTOME to make bigger dungeons.

I'll try to modify it this weekend so allow slightly bigger maximums, and
probably to allow you to specify the size of dungeon desired.

------
babsHeinz
I get "Error: You have arrived at this page incorrectly. Try going here." if I
click Dungeons TOME in the upper left corner after generating a new dungeon.

~~~
KenanSulayman
Opening this page in another browser it seems that they are loading that
Google CAPTCHA widget; maybe your browser is blocking it (as mine did) or you
have disabled third-party cookies.

fwiw if a page doesn't load with third-party cookies disabled, it should be
considered broken

------
Endy
I wish I could add something substantial here, but I just want to say, thank
you! I will probably be using this as early as Friday!

~~~
_Zoran_
yw :)

------
commenter1
Very nice, I made one for our D&D group.

~~~
_Zoran_
Hope it works out well :)

------
pavel_lishin
This is exactly the kind of project I could easily sink days and weeks into
making; I bet it was fun to write.

~~~
_Zoran_
It was! :)

------
cooleroni
You could probably stitch several of the results together for an interesting
campaign

------
mathnode
I like it. But what really impresses me is how fast the whole site is, even
with a captcha.

~~~
Semaphor
I stopped playing google's stupid games. Unless I really must visit a site,
the first sight of those retarded "discover all" things just makes me close
the tab.

~~~
TheCraiggers
Especially since they're getting free AI training from us.

~~~
drusepth
Isn't that better than generating useless data?

------
_Zoran_
Based on a few requests, I've added a key to the dungeon images.

------
lixtra
I find the cc-nc license for the generated images surprising[1].

So let me restate that: you take a set of rules from a 30+ year old book,
create a graphic from that and claim copyright on the graphic that was derived
by those very rules from a random or manually entered seed? Why do you think
you have more power over the output than the original author of the DMG?

[1]
[https://www.dungeonstome.com/faq.html](https://www.dungeonstome.com/faq.html)

EDIT: spelling cc-nc

~~~
danielvf
I think you are correct that an image derived from a program with no human
input is not copyrightable in the US. Relevant sections from the copyright.gov
compendium, 3rd edition

\--------------

# 306 The Human Authorship Requirement

The U.S. Copyright Office will register an original work of authorship,
provided that the work was created by a human being. The copyright law only
protects “the fruits of intellectual labor” that “are founded in the creative
powers of the mind.” Trade-Mark Cases, 100 U.S. 82, 94 (1879). Because
copyright law is limited to “original intellectual conceptions of the author,”
the Office will refuse to register a claim if it determines that a human being
did not create the work. Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, 111 U.S. 53,
58 (1884). For representative examples of works that do not satisfy this
requirement, see Section 313.2 below.

...

# 313.2 Works That Lack Human Authorship

The Office will not register works produced by nature, animals, or plants.
Likewise, the Office cannot register a work purportedly created by divine or
supernatural beings....

...

Similarly, the Office will not register works produced by a machine or mere
mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any
creative input or intervention from a human author... Example: A claim based
on a mechanical weaving process that randomly produces irregular shapes in the
fabric...

[https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/docs/compendium.pdf](https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/docs/compendium.pdf)
(Warning, approx 1200 pages)

~~~
johnday
That doesn't seem to imply that it cannot be copyrighted.

> Similarly, the Office will not register works produced by a machine or mere
> mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any
> creative input or intervention from a human author... Example: A claim based
> on a mechanical weaving process that randomly produces irregular shapes in
> the fabric...

There is clear direction in the program here; it does not operate randomly
without any creative input or intervention from a human author.

------
fabrixxm
nothing works...

~~~
daef
I had to activate JS and go to
[https://www.dungeonstome.com/generator.html](https://www.dungeonstome.com/generator.html)
\- which then generated
[https://www.dungeonstome.com/dungeon/1150189360.png](https://www.dungeonstome.com/dungeon/1150189360.png)
for me.

~~~
quickthrower2
You need a scripting language to prove you are not a robot.

