D&D General The senseless achitecture in most official products

[Paul Farquhar]

It’s a keep...would they have a pit toilet at ground level or at some higher level?

The posh folk would have a gardrobe in a turret on an upper level, everyone else uses buckets.

 

[DND_Reborn]

For me that's an example of "good enough". You don't need to go for perfect realism all the time. You just need to be plausible enough, and that cavern hits most of the important points such that although it's pretty darn unlikely, it is plausible enough that I would believe it could occur in the real world.

It gets one thing exactly right, and that's that cave passages cut along a single plane look almost exactly like maps of waterways. The map you have is the map of a drainage system with some extra complexity that comes from being in a 3D space and not just one the surface of the land.

The one thing that it gets wrong is something that is worthwhile overlooking, and that's that you almost never see a cavern map that is a drainage system which branches that much over that short of a distance, for the same reason that on the surface you almost never see streams and brooks that branch that much over that short of a distance. You can find a cavern complex that is small and branched, but those caves are almost never the result of drainage systems, but are usually fracture systems with water seeping along cracks in the crust. However, this is something that I think is fully justified for gameplay purposes, for the same reason that most real world buildings are symmetrical, but dungeons should never be symmetrical and should be drawn exclusively from realistic and plausible architecture that isn't, or otherwise should find ways to break symmetry (like one wing collapsed).

That's pretty much all I wanted. Enough thought and detail to make it believable without having to invest hours and hours into designing the map. When the players are mapping it themselves, it is complex enough to make them wonder at times just where they are.

 

[Fenris-77]

It doesn't all have to make sense though. Not every creature or race that delves does so with a set of blueprints and a bunch of usage studies. The relative ease with which magic could make this possible, in addition to some race's access to ancient Egyptian levels of labor, obviate some of the need to explain every last tunnel in terms of use and efficiency.

The above doesn't account for dungeons drawn with only with the adventure in mind and not even a nod in the direction of original use. Those suck. However, we should also probably acknowledge that adventure design is already a lot of work, and there are only so many extra hours that it's reasonable to expect someone to spend contemplating the history of the dungeon they are designing. Unless the design is egregiously and obviously wonky, I don't think it's actually all that important that a dungeon should pass the internet whiteroom design test (i.e. us).

I'm not trying to handwave the silliness that happens when your #1 design criteria is that the map should fit on the back of a module cover, just suggesting that the inherent oddness of the proliferation of complex underground habitations in a fantasy rpg setting is, in itself, explanatory, and perhaps doesn't warrant unlimbering the big guns of extreme logical rigor.

 

[Umbran]

Which would still need to be carted away and disposed of.

No Prize: It chews up the stone into gravel, combined with various fluids/chemicals from its digestive tract, and the leavings are left compacted like an aggregate cement along the walls of the tunnel. Either that aggregate is more dense than the original stone, or perhaps some of the mass escapes as vapor in the chemical reactions.

 

[Umbran]

With some absolutely marvelous exceptions so many dungeon maps presented in official products, be it PnP or also many computer games, have floor maps which commonly lack one thing: Any connection to realism purpose or aestethic.

That's three things - 1) Realism, 2)Purpose, and 3) Aesthetic.

And, we can note the floor maps probably commonly lack one other thing - designers who have actual skill in architectural design. They were drawn by RPG developers, not Frank Lloyd Wright. What do you expect?

 

[generic]

That's three things - 1) Realism, 2)Purpose, and 3) Aesthetic.

And, we can note the floor maps probably commonly lack one other thing - designers who have actual skill in architectural design. They were drawn by RPG developers, not Frank Lloyd Wright. What do you expect?

A lack of experience in architectural design doesn't excuse the idea of having fifty feet of solid rock in between the dining room and the barracks. Anyone can do better than that.

 

[Fenris-77]

A lack of experience in architectural design doesn't excuse the idea of having fifty feet of solid rock in between the dining room and the barracks. Anyone can do better than that.

Is this thing tunneled out of solid rock? If so, I don't see it as the egregious error that you do. YMMV I guess. As a general comment anyway, getting granular about a specific map might look different.

 

[generic]

Is this thing tunneled out of solid rock? If so, I don't see it as the egregious error that you do. YMMV I guess. As a general comment anyway, getting granular about a specific map might look different.

It's a waste of rock and labor, especially because walking fifty feet to get from one room to the next is a costly investment when your hallways are tunneled out of solid rock, nevermind when they're built out of wood, bricks, or whatever else.

 

[Umbran]

It's a waste of rock and labor, especially because walking fifty feet to get from one room to the next is a costly investment when your hallways are tunneled out of solid rock..

That would depend upon the rock. Not all rock is the same - if it is all one huge piece of solid granite, sure. If there's sandstone deposits next to granite, then having your tunnels go farther, but through softer rock, might make loads of sense.

It would also depend upon how it was dug, and by whom. If it was done by a heartless tyrant with slave labor, screw the effort! If it was done by magic, or by expanding and finishing natural caverns, mining veins, or the diggings of some non-planning creatures, that again may change the costs. And so on.

The system is designed for fairly pulpy adventure stories. While you of course get to pick what annoys you... this seems like one of the least constructive hills to die on.

 

[Fenris-77]

I don't disagree with your logic, but the lack of that planning probably impacts my enjoyment less than yours, that's all.