Dungeon Room Index: Libraries

(My last entry, Entrances)

Initially, I thought I'd run through my room list alphabetically. But inspiration is a fickle thing, so today's focus is libraries.

As I did last time, I'll start by giving you the rooms, and save notes and bonus surprises for the invested:

Why a library?

If you can justify it, a library is an excellent addition to a dungeon. Perhaps the builder was a mad wizard; that guy has to have owned some books. Perhaps the dungeon is the tomb to some great king; he wanted his wealth--including his knowledge--buried with him! Maybe the dungeon is just a surreal liminal plane of odds and ends of bizarre fever dreams. Even better! A crazy library with records from all periods of history sounds awesome.

Functionally, libraries are easy fodder for two of my gameplay goals:

• Making things big. Big is good, and libraries are frequently large open spaces.
• Making thigs vertical. Libraries are often multi-level! With open balconies and walkways. This is quite natural, and it's awesome.

Libraries also serve another function that's just lovely:

• They are natural vehicles of lore (and other useful knowledge). What better place to find a spellbook or a magic scroll than a fantasy library? What better way to reward investment in exploration then with a tome on magical remedies, or military training programs, or whatever? In the kinds of games I most enjoy, character advancement should happen because of things that happen in the game, and a library is a great place for knowledge of all kinds of usefulness.

Now, if the idea of your players plucking a random book off a library shelf and asking you for the title makes you sweat profusely, let me reassure you:

• Depending on how old (and how wet) this dungeon is, most of the books are probably moldy pulp anyways. It's not hard to handwave most of these books crumbling to dust, and frankly a book crumbling to dust just as a player reaches out to touch it is a nice flavorful bit of set dressing anyways.
• It's entirely possible that most of these books are written in language your players couldn't possibly know how to read. Again, depends how old and how exotic this locale is, but the principle stands. Have you always wanted to find a way for language to matter in your game? Here's an easy one.

(If you do want to hand out books of all varieties, stay tuned! I put some spark tables at the bottom of this page.)

Room Notes

If it ain't broke

Stone shelves. Scrolls or books in them. The shelves might be long rows or other interesting shapes. A shelf is potentially also a natural ladder, so you get to decide if the shelves go all the way up to the ceiling, or if there's space on top to climb up to. Shelves are natural cover, choke points, and vantage points.

A little flavor

Libraries are a great place for statues, and rows of shelves also have an inherently maze like quality to them that can be fun to lean into. 
That last room there has little reading nook things. (Coming up with good libraries starts with imagining every library you've ever been in and going from there).

Playing with levels and walkways

Multiple levels makes it possible to have nice open spaces. And elevated walkways make pillars a natural inclusion! Inasmuch as a library can be place for study, I've begun to add tables as well. Tables make for nice set dressing; they can be sturdy or rotted away, broken down into scrap wood (great fire fuel) or intact, and ready to be used as an improvised barricade.

This is a dungeon right? Not everything need be pristine. A fallen over bookshop is evocative, and also a sound reminder that they can be pushed over if the need arises.

This one plays with the idea that you can really make this sort of space very vertical. How many levels is it? As many as you want. Perhaps the little bridge connecting the outer walkway to the inner one is always constructed in a different cardinal direction. Perhaps the central pillar rises all the way to the ceiling, or maybe there's a platform with something particularly interesting at the top.

A little more grand

Inevitably, when I draw something like a library, I can't help but skew towards grander open spaces.

Shelves, statues, tables, levels, walkways. I'm very prone to symmetry when it comes to designing rooms; if you can break that habit it could be interesting! Even so, it's easy to add a little asymmetry to a space like this: selectively break those bridges, and perhaps some of those stairs have collapsed.

You walk through a large open doorway into a wide, high ceilinged room, arranged almost like an amphitheater. At the focal point is a massive globe. Perhaps the globe represents the world as it was believed to be long ago, with awkward proportions and continents that don't exist. Or perhaps it's far more accurate than any modern map, hinting that the builders of this place were far more advanced than at first assumed. (This is actually a principle that should be applied generally to all information found in a dungeon library.)

I had to go for a bit extra at least once. A massive space, 100 feet across in either direction. From one end of the room a waterfall crashes down from a grate 20ft up. The water runs down the center of the room, bridges spanning its width, ultimately to drain down a dark shaft on the other end of the room. Perhaps that shaft leads to a sewer like level below. Perhaps the river is entirely dried up, and only mold and moss remains, or other fungi. Balconies and stairs crumble, shelves are collapsed here and there. Naturally, in a room this big you need some hefty pillars to keep that ceiling up!

Thinking about it differently

If you can, stretch your brain a bit to think about what a library could be. Is it just a hall of books and scrolls?

Is it only dusty scholars who gather knowledge? What would a kobold's library look like? I imagine many pocket like rooms, with cubbies dug into the walls, filled with marked animals skins and inscribed bones.

The layout here is simpler, but instead of shelves full of paper, I imagined cords hung from the ceiling with etched planks of wood hung at intervals along their length. The planks rustle and clank against each other as you pass.

A gift for you

Putting a library in front of inquisitive players could potentially be daunting; what if they ask me to make up a random book on the spot?

To answer that need, I made a simple set of spark tables! (There are probably better ones out there, but I hope it helps!). Just roll a d10 and a d6 to pick a topic.

Remember though, the purpose of a spark table isn't simply to randomize a result, it's to spark your imagination; so go wild. Sometimes it helps to roll on the tables twice and try to come up with a concept that bridges both concepts (e.g. if I rolled Art (Poetry) and War (Training Techniques), that might produce a text of poems written by a soldier in boot camp, or set of combat forms with artistically named moves like in many Asian martial arts) 

d10	Topics
1	Arcana
2	Art/Music
3	Fiction
4	History
5	Medicine
6	Nature
7	Philosophy
8	Religion
9	War
10	Spellbook/Scroll

d6	Arcana
1	Metaphysics
2	Alchemy
3	Artifice
4	Realmatics
5	Runology
6	The Occult

d6	Art
1	Musical Manuscript
2	Music Theory
3	Visual Art Principles
4	Poetry
5	Architecture
6	Literary Criticism

d6	Fiction
1	Legends
2	Nursery Rhymes
3	Moral Fables
4	Romance
5	Horror
6	Historical Fiction

d6	History
1	Genealogy
2	Laws
3	Almanac
4	Nation's History
5	Biography
6	Rumors

d6	Medicine
1	Anatomy
2	Apothecary Recipes
3	Folk Remedies
4	Surgical Techniques
5	Diagnostics
6	Physician's Log

d6	Nature
1	Animals
2	Plants
3	Fungi
4	Minerals
5	Weather
6	Astronomy

d6	Philosophy
1	Logic
2	Rhetoric
3	Morality
4	Knowledge/Consciousness
5	Mathematics
6	Politics

d6	Religion
1	Scripture
2	Hymns
3	Prayers
4	Theology
5	Criticism
6	Apologetics

d6	War
1	Strategy
2	Conquests
3	Training Techniques
4	Weapon Schematics
5	General's Memoirs
6	Code of Honor