D&D General (+) What Should Go in a D&D Book About Dungeons?

[Lanefan]

That's a perfectly fine description of a dungeon as I described it. But if it turns out that it is a working fortress for the Dark Overlord, that description is potentially misleading. Of course, we're ignoring PCs doing research and recon prior to passing the old gate.

And if on checking out the castle they find it's got a much bigger dungeon beneath it than first thought - the unexplained noises being caused by critters from said dungeon reaching the surface having burrowed into the castle from below - then what?

One would like to think that both in and out of character the players will find ways to adapt to what the environment throws at them, even if it doesn't match the "advertising".

A sealed tomb holding ancient secrets is different than a death cult incursion outpost. Of course the death cult could set up their outpost in a sealed tomb, and that could promise some interesting wrinkles, but I don't just plop PCs at the entrance with false information. I like player agency.

Me too.

They should get to determine how they approach a dungeon.

Agreed.

And to do that they should have a reasonable idea of what the place is most of the time.

Not necessarily. Sometimes that info simply isn't available in advance, and the only way to find out what's in there is to go in there, look around, and learn as you go. And maybe that learned-on-the-fly info might cause the party to bail out and re-think or re-equip.

In the castle on the hill example, the players/PCs might conclude the problem is werewolves and gear up for that, only to find the actual problem is that something's animated all the corpses in the castle's crypt and they're up against a wide assortment of undead without a werewolf in sight. Time to go back to town and trade all that wolfsbane in on some holy water and a couple of spare Clerics.

 

[pemerton]

Let's say you're playing a game in which there has been a waste disposal option for creatures everywhere you go. Sometimes it is just a deadend corridor. Sometimes it is a portable hole. Maybe an Otyugh. Maybe some oozes. Sometimes it is a river. Whatever - but the DM made sure there was an option for waste removal.

And then the PCs come to an orc cavern system and discover there is no waste removal option. This is a potential clue the PCs could note to indicate that maybe there is more to the complex than they've found. Maybe the druid wildshapes into an animal with a good nose and follows the faint smell of waste to a secret door. Maybe they just say, "they have to poop somewhere" and search the caves again. Maybe they speak with dead and ask where the orcs pooped before they died (and if you've never experienced the grand magnificence of Post Mortem Excretion Interrogation I feel sorry for you). But it can be a trigger for the PCs to figure something out.

And I promise you, players - across the board - love to feel like they figured something out. Not the PCs. The players.

I think there's a lot of scope to set up mysteries and clues in a RPG, including in a dungeon. I personally wouldn't use latrines as the core of one.

 

[Andvari]

Yellow mold. Immediately upon turning the first page, spores are released.

 

[Reynard]

Not necessarily. Sometimes that info simply isn't available in advance, and the only way to find out what's in there is to go in there, look around, and learn as you go. And maybe that learned-on-the-fly info might cause the party to bail out and re-think or re-equip.

In the castle on the hill example, the players/PCs might conclude the problem is werewolves and gear up for that, only to find the actual problem is that something's animated all the corpses in the castle's crypt and they're up against a wide assortment of undead without a werewolf in sight. Time to go back to town and trade all that wolfsbane in on some holy water and a couple of spare Clerics.

Sure, I'm not trying to be militant or uncompromising about it. I was just saying I like reliably categories most of the time, not that you should never surprise or bait and switch.

 

[jgsugden]

I think there's a lot of scope to set up mysteries and clues in a RPG, including in a dungeon. I personally wouldn't use latrines as the core of one.

While there has been a taste for latrines in this discussion, it is about making sense overall - not just for poop behavior. You want the space to feel lived in so that it creates the sense of realism. Sleeping spaces, food sources, water sources - walking through the day of the creatures in your brain to figure out what they might do when not finding off invading PCs ... there is a lot more to it.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Yellow mold. Immediately upon turning the first page, spores are released.

Sphere of annihilation on the cover?

 

[Corinnguard]

What I would like to see in a dungeon are riddles and puzzles. This forum thread reminded me of the times I would encounter one or both while playing computer games such as Wizardry 7, Wizards and Warriors, and Elder Scrolls: Arena. This was back in the 90's. Sometimes you don't need a hoard of monsters guarding a treasure, just a really challenging riddle or a puzzle to vex and frustrate the players.

 

[Bill Zebub]

While there has been a taste for latrines in this discussion, it is about making sense overall - not just for poop behavior. You want the space to feel lived in so that it creates the sense of realism. Sleeping spaces, food sources, water sources - walking through the day of the creatures in your brain to figure out what they might do when not finding off invading PCs ... there is a lot more to it.

And while there’s nothing wrong with any of that, it’s just one of many tools a DM/designer has to make a dungeon interesting, and when a dungeon is interesting in other ways it’s the rare player who questions what those carrion crawlers survive on, or whatever the realism issue is. As common as the player who always points out, whenever somebody takes falling damage, that it really should scale exponentially. (And, yes, they exist.)

Now, I’ll agree that if I anticipate that question, and think, “Oh, I know, I’ll put a colony of giant rats in area 17, and giant rat skeletons in the carrion crawler nest…” that will bring the dungeon to life just a little bit. And if it occurs to me I will.

But for each thing like that I think of, there are 10 other realism issues that a really astute (and annoying) player would note and object to. But most people I’ve played with don’t really care.

It seems like your mileage does vary, which is fine.

 

[Lanefan]

Sphere of annihilation on the cover?

This and the yellow mold idea, while fine in theory, would have the unfortunate yet inevitable result in practice of steadily shrinking the customer base for future products. The bean-counters will never go for it.

 

[pemerton]

While there has been a taste for latrines in this discussion, it is about making sense overall - not just for poop behavior. You want the space to feel lived in so that it creates the sense of realism. Sleeping spaces, food sources, water sources - walking through the day of the creatures in your brain to figure out what they might do when not finding off invading PCs ... there is a lot more to it.

I don't think what you describe has been a component in any of the classic dungeons I can think of. This sort of thing is not found in White Plume Mountain. Not in the ToH. I don't recall it being a big part of KotB (the part of that I recall best is the shrine to chaos, and I don't think they have a kitchen). It's not generally part of the less-classic dungeons I know that are from the heyday of OD&D (eg the early White Dwarf ones).

I think dungeons work better when the clues and inferences are self-contained. Eg in the first dungeon that I designed for Torchbearer, one of the room had been the forging room for the (former) Dwarven occupant. There were leather hangings across the passageway between it and another room. The PCs investigated those hangings, and noted the smoke that had accreted on one side of them. But they didn't go into the room. Later on, after they had explored a (non-forged-based) workroom, one of the players worked out that the other room, that produced smoke, must be the forge room!

The reasoning was based on elements within the dungeon, rather than bringing in considerations of "realism" which may not be shared between players and GM.