Free tables Dungeon rooms by kind
Random Sewer Rooms — d20 Dungeon Room Tables
Free d20 tables for sewer rooms in 5e: what the room was, what's in it, what it smells and sounds like, and what lives there.
The party opened a door in the sewer you hadn't planned past. Roll d20 twice on the table below: once for what the room was, and once on the second column for something in it. Then d10 each for a smell and a sound, from the lists underneath.
For what's in the room now, roll d6: on 1–2 nothing, on 3–4 a creature, on 5 a trap, on 6 a stash. A third of rooms being empty is deliberate. A dungeon where every door hides a fight teaches the players to stop opening doors.
Smells, d10: (1) Exactly what you'd expect, and worse. (2) Chemicals from the alchemists' drains, sharp enough to sting. (3) Rotting vegetables from the market above. (4) Stagnant water and mould. (5) Wet rat. (6) Smoke drifting down from a bakery grate, warm and baffling. (7) Something dead, not far away. (8) Tar and pitch where the walls were patched. (9) Mud, heavy and clay-like. (10) Surprisingly little: the water here runs fast and clean.
Sounds, d10: (1) Rushing water, loud enough to drown out whispers. (2) Rats squealing and fighting. (3) Cart wheels rumbling overhead. (4) A splash, just out of the light. (5) Someone singing, off-key, further down the tunnel. (6) A heavy grinding, like a sluice gate opening. (7) Bubbles rising and popping in the sludge. (8) Muffled voices from a grate above. (9) A steady drip into a deep pool. (10) An echoing thump, then silence.
Creatures that fit a sewer, from the SRD with their challenge ratings: Giant Rat (CR 1/8); Swarm of Rats (CR 1/4); Giant Centipede (CR 1/4); Thug (CR 1/2); Crocodile (CR 1/2); Gray Ooze (CR 1/2); Wererat, Hybrid Form (CR 2); Gelatinous Cube (CR 2); Otyugh (CR 5); Chuul (CR 4); Aboleth (CR 10); Adult Black Dragon (CR 14). Pick one whose numbers suit your party, or let the app do the sums.
The table
20 results. Roll d20.
| d20 | The room | Something in it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | A main channel, the walkways either side narrow and slick. | A grate overhead, with feet walking past it. |
| 2 | A junction where three tunnels drain into a deep round sump. | A lost boot floating in circles in an eddy. |
| 3 | A cistern, the water black and the ceiling held up by columns. | Chalk marks on the wall: arrows, numbers, a skull. |
| 4 | An overflow chamber with a grate at the bottom of a steep slope. | A body wrapped in sacking, wedged against the grating. |
| 5 | A maintenance room with tools, rope and a rusted pump. | Rats watching from a ledge, not running. |
| 6 | A smugglers' landing: a jetty, lanterns and crates stamped with fake seals. | A lantern hung on a nail, lit, with nobody near it. |
| 7 | A collapsed section where the street above has fallen through. | Coins glinting in the muck below the market grate. |
| 8 | A sluice room with a great wheel that opens and closes the gates. | A rotting rowboat tied to a pipe. |
| 9 | An old crypt the sewer builders broke into and walled off, badly. | Luminous slime that pulses gently on the ceiling. |
| 10 | A settling pool, thick with sludge, ringed by a narrow ledge. | A ladder up to a trapdoor with a heavy lock on this side. |
| 11 | A beggars' camp on a dry shelf above the waterline. | Old city arms carved over an arch that's mostly bricked up. |
| 12 | A culvert where the tunnel shrinks to a crawl. | A spill of fresh blood on the walkway, dripping into the water. |
| 13 | A chamber under a market, rotten produce raining through a grate. | Signs of a fight: a snapped club, a torn cloak. |
| 14 | An outflow tunnel, daylight and the river at the far end. | Bones in the silt, some of them not human. |
| 15 | A cult meeting place: benches, candles, and a symbol on the wall. | A pipe from the alchemist's quarter, dripping something green. |
| 16 | A drowned room, knee-deep, where the channel has backed up. | A sleeping bundle of rags that turns out to be only rags. |
| 17 | A brick vault from an older city, beneath the current one. | A wall of old posters from above, washed down and pasted by water. |
| 18 | A spillway with a steep drop and a rope handrail. | A drain cover with scratches around it from the underside. |
| 19 | A rat-catcher's hideout: traps, cages and a hammock. | Steps down into the water with nowhere they seem to go. |
| 20 | A pumping hall, ancient machinery rusted into one solid lump. | A carefully tended shrine of candles and bottle caps. |
Questions
How many rooms in a dungeon should be empty?
More than feels natural: around a third. Empty rooms are where the players breathe, search, and argue about which way to go, and they make the next door tense again.
How do I make a random room feel like it belongs?
Tie one detail to the dungeon's story. If the crypt belongs to a family of embalmers, the fresh flowers on one grave were left by the last of them.