Free tables Dungeon rooms by kind
Random Wizard's tower Rooms — d20 Dungeon Room Tables
Free d20 tables for wizard's tower 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 wizard's tower 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) Ozone, like just after a lightning strike. (2) Parchment, ink and dust. (3) Burnt hair. (4) Herbs hung to dry: sage, rue, something unfamiliar. (5) Brimstone, faint and lingering. (6) Sweet perfume that doesn't come from anywhere. (7) Formaldehyde and something pickled. (8) Hot metal. (9) Beeswax and polish. (10) Rain, though the windows are shut.
Sounds, d10: (1) A clock ticking, though there is no clock. (2) Pages turning by themselves. (3) A faint hum, like a plucked string that never stops. (4) Whispering from one of the jars. (5) Gears grinding in the walls. (6) Wind howling around the tower. (7) Glass chiming, gently, over and over. (8) Something heavy dragging across the floor above. (9) A bird singing a tune that sounds almost like words. (10) Crackling, like a fire in an empty hearth.
Creatures that fit a wizard's tower, from the SRD with their challenge ratings: Flying Sword (CR 1/4); Imp (CR 1); Animated Armor (CR 1); Rug of Smothering (CR 2); Mimic (CR 2); Flesh Golem (CR 5); Mage (CR 6); Shield Guardian (CR 7); Clay Golem (CR 9); Efreeti (CR 11); Archmage (CR 12); Iron Golem (CR 16); Lich (CR 21). 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 laboratory: glassware, burners and a bench scarred by acid. | A quill still writing on its own, slowly, in a language nobody knows. |
| 2 | A library, the shelves reaching up into the gloom with a ladder on rails. | Scorch marks in the shape of a person, arms raised. |
| 3 | A summoning chamber, a circle inlaid in silver on the floor. | A cat that watches everything and will not leave the room. |
| 4 | An observatory with a brass telescope aimed at a closed shutter. | Books stacked into a staircase up to a high shelf. |
| 5 | A specimen room, jars of things floating in cloudy fluid. | A ticking that seems to come from inside the walls. |
| 6 | A study, a desk buried in papers, a chair pushed back in a hurry. | Glowing runes around the doorframe, faded and flickering. |
| 7 | A menagerie of empty cages, one of them bent open from the inside. | A shattered mirror, the pieces still reflecting the room as it was. |
| 8 | An apprentice's cell: a narrow bed, a slate of copied letters. | A chalkboard of equations with a rude note at the bottom. |
| 9 | A scrying room with a basin of water that shows nothing when anyone looks. | A broken staff in two pieces, the break still smoking. |
| 10 | A vault of components, drawers labelled in cramped handwriting. | Floating dust that refuses to settle. |
| 11 | A workshop full of half-built clockwork, gears everywhere. | A bell jar with a tiny storm inside it. |
| 12 | A gallery of portraits whose eyes have all been painted over. | A stuffed owl whose head turns to follow people. |
| 13 | A room that is bigger on the inside than the tower is on the outside. | A candle that burns without getting any shorter. |
| 14 | A greenhouse at the top of the stairs, overgrown with strange plants. | Dozens of letters addressed to the wizard, all unopened. |
| 15 | A practice room, the walls scorched and pitted by spells. | Chains that go into the floor with nothing on the end. |
| 16 | A dining room laid for a guest who never came, the food under glass. | A painting that is slightly different each time someone looks. |
| 17 | A bedchamber with a canopy of stars that still slowly turns. | A rug with a stain nobody could get out, and a burn where someone tried. |
| 18 | A mirror room, every wall a mirror, one of them reflecting the wrong room. | A table set with instruments for measuring something that isn't here. |
| 19 | A stair landing where the stairs keep going up past the tower's roof. | Footprints on the ceiling. |
| 20 | A map room, a vast table covered in a map of somewhere that isn't here. | A hat on a hook, too big for any human head. |
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.