The modern world is filled with a certain number of boring, pointless meetings. Maybe the meeting itself is pointless. Or maybe you are simply an ancillary attendee who should have been left off the invitation. For whatever reason, you are stuck here until the meeting ends. With nothing else to keep it busy, your mind wanders back to the dungeon.
Every time a new participant in the boring meeting talks, try to write down the first remotely interesting word you hear them say that is either a noun, an adjective, or a verb. If they’re talking fast, you might only catch one or two of those words. That’s OK. These are loose guidelines, not strict rules. Keep writing down words until you have at least one verb, one noun, and one adjective. Cluster these in groups until you have a handful of them.
Nouns Are Rooms
Each noun defines the purpose or status of a room in the dungeon that you are creating. Sometimes this will be very literal, like the word “store” suggesting a storehouse. Other times the room you create will only have the vaguest trace of the origin word. Some words will not work at all, but try doing some free association before you give up on a noun that doesn’t have any dungeon energy. You may find it takes you to some unexpected places.
Adjectives Are Contents
Adjectives elaborate on what is in the room. This can take many forms, but the following are good places to start.
Aesthetics: What does the room look like? Smell like? Sound like?
Purpose: The noun may imply what the room is for, but an adjective that pushes back against that implication may suggest a change in purpose. Integral to many classic dungeons is the idea that a room’s purpose has changed over time.
Occupants: Adjectives can strongly suggest who or what uses a room or has been there recently.
Verbs Are Current Events
Verbs can suggest monsters, NPCs, and other dungeon activity. They can also suggest hazards, environmental effects, and weather. The random encounters table is a good place to start thinking about verbs. What is happening right now? What happened recently? What will happen soon? If the room is not an empty room, the verb may be the best clue toward what a monster is doing, how a trap threatens interlopers, or how a trick or special feature presents itself to the explorer.
An Example: The Questioning Device
I listened and wrote down the noun "question," the adjective "technological," and the verb "counting."
“Question” could mean many things, from a scrying pool to a riddle. I will make our “question” room an interrogation room. This is a pretty literal interpretation and gives us a grounded place to start.
“Technological” could go in a few directions. The torture machine from The Princess Bride, for example. Perhaps there is a techno-magical machine in this space. Whatever its original purpose, the current dungeon occupants use it to interrogate prisoners.
“Counting” is a great verb because it suggests both subject and object – someone is counting and someone or something is being counted. Perhaps one of a number of prisoners has escaped? A headcount is happening, or has just happened, and the captors have discovered that someone ins missing. They are now using the Questioning Device to try to force the remaining prisoners to tell them where the escapee went.
And so we have a fully formed room.
Pay Attention, Class
Am I suggesting you be lazy? Rude? Disrespectful to the organizer of your boring meeting? Well, yes and no.
Yes, it is true that I am suggesting you slack off a bit. But I did preface it by saying I was talking about meetings that were unimportant, unnecessary, or overly broad in terms of invitees.
And for what it’s worth, I think this game is a way of genuinely paying attention. The worst sort of inattention is the full-on daydream, where you are thinking about a dungeon that has nothing to do with the meeting. At least in this model, you are paying a minimum level of attention in order to catch those prompt words. Your brain may subconsciously catch more detail than you expect, just because you have given it an ulterior (and more interesting) reason to care.
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