D&D General The senseless achitecture in most official products

Lanefan

Victoria Rules
Zig-zag corridors are perhaps more easily defended than straight ones?

The extra architectural features, nonsensical though they often are, play well into the exploration pillar of the game, for those tables that take such things seriously and who like the tension of never knowing what's lurking around the next corner.

They also play well into mapping, for those who do such - if the party's making a half-decent map secret rooms become rather obvious in an ordinary building, but not so much on a map like the one @Oofta posted just above.
 

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Oofta

Legend
A worm that big is impossible on a number of levels, as is it burrowing through solid rock, so, not really an issue on the grounds of weirdness.

(Speaking of, the defining thing about a purple worm is it's color?)

...you don't really need to justify them, I think, is a valid attitude.
I like to base my world on reality + reasonable application of magic, not "anything goes because magic".

But that's just me. If I'm going to have a "dungeon" (which honestly is incredibly rare for me) it's either going to be based on natural formations, ruins of old buildings built according to a logical real world plan, etc.
 

A building or structure should be desigend to serve a purpose, even a mine has some regularity in it, although here you can argue that the diggers followed some ore vein. But how is it that every temple floor plan looks like it is dedicated to the gods of chaos?

Quite.

This is something that has bothered me since I first encountered "official" maps/dungeons back in 1989 or whenever. The first person who DM'd for me drew her own maps, and they were all relatively realistic, and all made complete sense, and when I started DMing not long thereafter I did similar. Some stuff seems fine - high magic (an upside-down mountain or whatever) or exaggeration (corridors 20' wide when a real-life structure of that type they'd be likely 10' or less, quite possibly a lot less) don't really bother me, and indeed both can work well and be fun without really damaging immersion or whatever. I'm not too concerned about where the stone went in a world where it could clearly be magicked away in many cases.

But senselessness, that is an actual problem. Dungeons that are designed in ways that just do not make any kind of sense whatsoever, that don't serve any purpose whatsoever. They don't have a layout that matches even remotely with any kind of history or purpose they supposedly once had, even if they have any real backstory that makes sense, and many do not. Half-arsing it is particularly bad. Just monsters in rooms and traps and layout that makes no sense in something from the 1980s or earlier and which is at least cool in how extreme it is can be sort of acceptable. But you get these modern dungeons (including the first three official ones for 4E), which are just senseless drivel, whilst giving nods to realism (like humanoid monsters having a sleeping area) that only serve to heighten and highlight how nonsensical the overall setup is. The first 4E adventure is basically nothing but this, and there was absolutely no excuse for it in 2008. Almost every element of the dungeon, if you think about it for more than a few seconds, makes no sense, and some steadily make less and less sense the longer you think about it (the whole deal with the skeleton-summoning corridor was particularly nonsensical, even perverse, given the backstory attached).

Sentient creatures aren't going to live somewhere that doesn't serve a purpose to them, and aren't going to fail to modify it to better serve that purpose.

I think most people just completely don't even think about this stuff - designers and players - but if you're someone that does, it's maddening. I likewise just end up having to re-draw or re-do a lot of maps, or change how they're explained, or what is in them. And yeah it's also weird that some people seem to think "normal" maps are unacceptable. It bothers me as a player, too. I notice that it's extremely rare in modern games and relatively rarer in futuristic ones (as compared to medieval fantasy and the like), because I guess people think about things more naturally there.

I'd also add that sometimes you get "set decoration" NPCs who create the same problem of senselessness and highlighting the irrationality of the whole deal - most commonly some rando slaves who have been enslaved by some creatures but aren't actually like, doing anything. They're all just sitting quietly in the slave pen, even though they could be mining or cooking or farming or cleaning and tidying or whatever. And there isn't even a plausible "they'll be sold on" or "they'll be sacrificed" deal in most cases. And often how they (or indeed their captors!) are being fed is a complete and total mystery (and an explanation tends to be an expensive one).

And what seems really strange to me is that it's actually both easier and more fun to come up with these sort of explanations and make things make some kind of vague sense (it hardly has to be total) than it is to come up with random stuff for the sake of random stuff. Design a dungeon as a dead dwarven city and it practically draws itself (just collapse bits you don't need/want).
 
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Tony Vargas

Legend
I like to base my world on reality + reasonable application of magic, not "anything goes because magic".
But that's just me.
It's a common and understandable double-standard. I blame the long strange association between sci-fi & fantasy. ;) Reality + one 'what if' is the nucleus of sci-fi. Fantasy comes with a whole raft of baggage that doesn't dovetail neatly with reality, nor even, strictly logically, itself, at times, - but it's all familiar and intuitive enough if you let that impulse go.

Now-a-days - and, by that, I really mean my whole life - there's a lot of 'science fantasy' that either is a boatload of tropes with little realism, but their tropes all taken from classic sci-fi, where each was part of the 'what if' proposition (even if you have to go back to Asimov or EE 'Doc' Smith to find it), so really, fantasy that looks like science fiction, or a thought-through, realistic historically-inspired setting with the addition of a supernatural element that explores the logical the impact of the supernatural on the setting, so, really, science-fiction storytelling that looks like fantasy*.







*and, no, I don't mean "magical realism" an artistic/literary sub-genre originating in Latin America, typified by Jorge Borges, the definition of which has been stretched, of late, to include dreck like Twilight, nor do I mean 'urban fantasy,' to which V:tM, Twilight & whatnot more properly belong.
 
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Iry

Hero
You are absolutely right. But designing dungeons with actual dungeon building principals in mind explodes the amount of prep time to mind blowing levels, for a fairly small increase in player enjoyment. The best option is to brush up on a few important principals, let them inform your choices going forward, and only really jump down the rabbit hole of dungeon design if you are paid to do it or just personally love doing it.
 

Oofta

Legend
It's a common and understandable double-standard. I blame the long strange association between sci-fi & fantasy. ;) Reality + one 'what if' is the nucleus of sci-fi. Fantasy comes with a whole raft of baggage that doesn't dovetail neatly with reality, nor even, strictly logically, itself, at times, - but it's all familiar and intuitive enough if you let that impulse go.


It's kind of funny. I have no problem with a lot of tropes in D&D. Hit points, Armor Class, "poof you gained a level and now can do something you didn't know how to do yesterday".

But I accept those oddities because they're necessary for the simplified simulation mechanics. But dungeons designed because they're easier to draw on paper and people don't want to think about where to put the latrines? Gaah! Oh well, everyone needs a pet peeve, right? :rolleyes:
 

Oofta

Legend
You are absolutely right. But designing dungeons with actual dungeon building principals in mind explodes the amount of prep time to mind blowing levels, for a fairly small increase in player enjoyment. The best option is to brush up on a few important principals, let them inform your choices going forward, and only really jump down the rabbit hole of dungeon design if you are paid to do it or just personally love doing it.
Personally what I do is only draw out significant areas and leave the sausage-making parts of the buildings down to narrative most of the time.
 


Shiroiken

Legend
One of the earliest issues of The Dragon had an article about how to design dungeons that make sense. Even if there's no way for the players to figure out what the original use for it might be, each area of a dungeon should have had a purpose for being built (this article inspired the dungeon dressing appendix of the 1E DMG). I recently ran Sunless Citadel, and several areas were clearly part of the original design of the citadel... but most of it didn't seem to have any purpose whatsoever, except as being part of the adventure (such as a 10 ft corridor turning to a 5 ft corridor, then back to 10 ft).

An area might be tightly constructed, with only a foot or two between chambers, assuming there was structural reinforcing and solid design. Alternately, an area might be fairly spread apart because the area removed was of easier to remove material (sand/dirt), with only chambers and rooms actually carved out of the stone. I think the second option makes more sense from a dungeon perspective, as it's not likely that someone would excavate a huge area, just to build it back up with walls (basically the world's largest basement).

Above ground structures have generally gotten better over the years, but some of them are obviously just dungeons with a different name. A temple should make sense as a temple, and the encounters designed around it, not vice versa!
 

Oofta

Legend
This is the most realistic dungeon map ever made:


Actually that might not be half bad if it all started out as a natural formation.

Much better than my first (and last) attempt at a mega dungeon. Each level spelled out different things with their hallways. First floor spelled DEATH, second DOOM, third DESPAIR and last was DRAGON. Because of course the dragon was on the lowest level with no exit.
 

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