It’s easy to trap yourself into running D&D adventures in dungeons that are monster lairs, tombs, and temples. Now you can roll up a broad variety of buildings the heroes can explore.
Keep in mind that these don’t have to be human ruins. They can be elven, dwarven, or even giant-made structures.
Categories
Institutions
Institutions are typically made to last, and that means being made of stone. Most are places of worship, but they can be other sorts of places of lasting purpose.
| 1d20 | Institution |
|---|---|
| 1-2 | Temple or church |
| 3-5 | School (grammar school for youths or college of arms or sorcery) |
| 6-8 | Walled market town (300-1000 pop) |
| 9 | Foundations of a walled city (2000-10000 pop) |
| 10 | Palace or other seat of government or religious power |
| 11 | Island gathering spot in a small lake, connected to the shore by a causeway |
| 12-14 | Monastery/abbey/convent (more or less the same thing) |
| 15 | Lonely shrine to a nearly forgotten god |
| 17-18 | Statues or other sculptures meant to demonstrate ownership of a territory (borderland) |
| 18 | Meeting place for negotiations (troubled border or mountain top) |
| 19-20 | Ring of standing stones (menhir) or hanging stones (henge) |
Strongholds
Strongholds are meant to withstand assault, so they tend to be made of stone and are often built in strategic locations, which includes secluded locales atop mountains or hills with a commanding view.
| 1d20 | Institution |
|---|---|
| 1-2 | Fortified manor house |
| 3-5 | Dwarven hall (partially underground) |
| 6-8 | Castle |
| 9 | Watch Tower (borderland) |
| 10 | Gatehouse in a great wall or long wall (borderland) |
| 11 | Prison (mainly for captives and debtors, not criminals) |
| 12-14 | Fortified underground city |
| 15 | Bastion meant to hold a legendary magic item that cannot fall into the wrong hands |
| 16 | Signal tower (topped with fire pit) |
| 17 | Hill fort (mostly wood with palisade wall surrounded by a ditch) |
| 18 | Ancient military camp |
| 19-20 | Keep (large tower with added structures and possibly smaller tower) |
Rural Buildings
Stone being able to outlast wood, some of these might be the only thing standing on a ruined manor. It wouldn’t be surprising to find an abandoned manor house and, not far away, an overgrown stone church, and little else.
| 1d20 | Institution |
|---|---|
| 1-2 | Fortified manor house |
| 3-5 | Mansion or unfortified manor house, |
| 6-8 | Ancient villa or yeoman’s hall house |
| 9 | Icehouse (partly underground storage for blocks of lake ice) |
| 10 | Peasant hovel (a couple of dozen in a village) |
| 11 | Village of hovels and cottages on a manor |
| 12-14 | Temple or church (in a village or at a crossroads between small settlements or on a sacred hill as a pilgrimage site) |
| 15 | Vicarage (priest’s dwelling near a church) |
| 16 | Brew house |
| 17 | Barn (storehouse, malt house, tithe barn, etc.) or cave storehouse |
| 18 | School (grammar school for youths or college of arms or sorcery) |
| 19-20 | Mill (water mill or windmill for milling grain into flower or pumping water) |
Solitary Places
Some buildings can be found in a border land or frontier of a wilderness, where populations are low, or in an abandoned area or wasteland that is not good for agriculture, including an island.
| 1d20 | Institution |
|---|---|
| 1-2 | Surface entrance to underground tomb… (1d6: 1-2=on a hill; 3-4=in a forest; 5=on a mountainside; 6=on an island in a lake) |
| 3-5 | Barrow mound, cairn, or other surface tomb… (1d6: 1-2=on a hill; 3=in a forest; 4=on high ground in a bog; 5=on a mountainside; 6=on an island in a lake) |
| 6-8 | Coaching inn on a long stretch of road between towns |
| 9 | Hermitage or traveler’s hut on a lonely moor |
| 10 | Mausoleum, pyramid, or ziggurat |
| 11 | Food storage vaults (cliff side or underground) |
| 12-14 | Cottage of a ranger, forester, witch, sorcerer, etc. |
| 15 | Tree house or tree town |
| 16 | Quarry or mine (partially underground) |
| 17 | Shipwreck on the shore |
| 18 | Bridge with tollhouse |
| 19-20 | Lighthouse (on the coast) or watch tower (on a borderland) |
Bonus
- Trading hub, where traders would meet
- Aqueduct that once carried water from the mountains to a city
- Tunnels under a town once taken over by goblins, who connected the cellars to be their lair.
- Cavern formed when ash & lava covered a dragon’s corpse, & the dragon rotted away.
- Castle that was slowly buried by silt when a river changed course yet left most chambers empty.
- Palace of the gods (real but empty of old gods, or metaphorical and only a pilgrimage site)
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