Using Spreadsheets to Organize Dungeons

 

I’ve mentioned this before on the show, but wasn’t able to extrapolate on what I believe to be one of my greatest innovations.

Due to popular demand, I have provided a template for anyone interested in using this tool. Make sure to go to File > Make a Copy to your own Google Drive. If you don't use Google products, it's not hard to duplicate on your own.

 

Here’s the scenario: The players are crawling through a mega-dungeon. They’ve already explored parts of it, but tonight, they’re going to push to get to the next floor. The GM is following along with his printed mega dungeon, and a physical notebook next to it with notes about which rooms have been cleared. As the players clear rooms, he makes notes, either in the published hardcover or in the notebook. He tries to be organized, but there are a lot of rooms, and by the time players are done with an area, it may have changed significantly. 

This was the problem I encountered when running Dwimmermount. I had notes on a big physical map behind my screen, and in an Evernote doc, but it was chaotic having to reference multiple sources to have the most up-to-date version of the dungeon. It was slow and tedious, and after all, one of the (many) reasons I wanted to run an OSR megadungeon in the first place was to minimize prep.

Lo and behold, while listening to Roleplay Rescue, Che Webster’s guest explained that he used spreadsheets to organize his D&D game. I was already a big fan of spreadsheets, but mostly for organizing vast quantities of what I call “passive” data, such as spells, feats, and proficiencies, because you can sort your columns alphabetically or numerically, and quickly find everything you’re looking for. It’s not particularly attractive , but it sure beats scrolling through a PDF or thumbing through a book to find a single data point. Plus, you can easily modify entries to accommodate house rules or rulings. Using this method for tracking an active part of the game, though, was a novel idea.

Here’s a page from Dwimmermount. In this case, it shows 6ish rooms (since room 9 continues on the following page), and that’s pretty average for this book; If there’s an illustration or a detailed room, fewer rooms fit on a page. Also, the text isn’t well organized; there’s no particular hierarchy of information. Sometimes there’s a description and then monsters later, or vice-versa, though you can see the monster stats below their appearance in the room (observe the Wight just above room 8). Magic items are italicized, but you can see that I resorted to highlighting them in the PDF to make it easier to see. It’s just not very well organized, and being that this is a mega dungeon product, this is something DMs will be struggling with for the entirety of the campaign. As for customizability, I could always scrawl notes in the margins of my physical book, or annotate/comment on the things that have changed within the PDF, but that’s not very helpful, especially when you realize that most rooms will be cleared of monsters and treasure, and then later become restocked. It quickly becomes a mess.

BEHOLD, the POWER OF THE SPREADSHEET!

Here you can see TWENTY TWO rooms on one screen, instead of the 6 from the book, and each room is interactive cell. I can consult my private map with numbered rooms, and quickly find the entry in the corresponding cell. You can also see the other floors of the dungeon in tabs along the bottom of the screen. So if a PC falls into a room on a lower level, I can quickly find the room. This keeps the game moving, instead of pausing while I turn pages behind a screen.

The best part, and I mean the BEST PART is the modularity. You can see that center column called Looted/Restocked. As players move through, I simply type Cleared in that column next to the room they cleared. When I have a few minutes later in the week, I can make the modifications to the main text in the cell to reflect whatever changes they made to it. For example, the players once cleared a vault of all treasure, then left a letter behind calling any passing adventurers to come join their guild. They actually wrote it out and signed it! I was able to simply transcribed this letter into the room’s cell, not having to worry about locating a post-it note or a hastily-scrawled, tiny notation in the margins of the book. It’s quick and clean.

I also check for restocks by simply rolling the dice on each cleared room. The rooms that get restocked then get the full treatment, according to the tables in the rules. After this, I simply add the stats and HP values of the monsters to the room, along with whatever treasure might be there. Notice that room 5 (the Gallery of Masks) has Dwarves (a potential foe or ally) and Treasure from Table E, which I haven’t rolled yet.

For most D&D players, there is probably no need to ever use this method. Mostly it’s used for dungeon running. Since I now exclusively play OSR-type games using my favorite system, this tool has proven EXTREMELY useful, and is an essential part of my tool kit.