D&D General D&D Dungeon Map Design: Good and Bad

[Mannahnin]

I still use use the white bubble doors on my maps. Does anyone have strong opinions about those?

I don't like it when the doors are hard to see because the artist decided to draw them to scale. This makes then difficult to discern from windows.

I also like the extra room inside a bubble door to communicate information, like a dot for a locked door. I also indicate where the hinge is on each door using this space.

Agreed on all counts. I like the white rectangle/double rectangle door/double door map symbols I learned from BECMI. The main refinement I like to include is a little curved arrow indicating which way they open and implicitly where the hinges are.

Yeah, you are preaching to the choir with me on that one. I think indicating the positioning of occupants supports a certain kind of play style. One that Fourth Edition in particular was pushing.

I have to remind myself that my preferred play style is just one of several, or maybe even many.

True. Having positions indicated clearly is good for set piece battles. I don't need or want it most of the time, but it can be great for encounters I've designed (or the module writer has) to play out in a particular dramatic way. Pre-calculating ranges for spells and where baddies should be can be a great thing.

 

[Lanefan]

Agreed on all counts. I like the white rectangle/double rectangle door/double door map symbols I learned from BECMI. The main refinement I like to include is a little curved arrow indicating which way they open and implicitly where the hinges are.

I add a red line indicating where the door is when it's open, which serves the same purpose.

The only time this doesn't work (either option) is when the door slides or lifts open vertically, like a portcullis.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

I draw a line from the center of the front of the door to the corner where the hinge is located. Knowing where the hinge is tells us how the door swings, and if we can knock the hinges off to breach the door. The front of the door is the side without the hinge.

In the image we can see two sets of double doors on the right. The top set of doors swing open into the rectangular chamber, whereas the bottom pair swing out. The top and bottom single doors are locked as indicated by the dot (but the top one is silly because we can just knock the hinges off.)

I've always wondered what other information can be inserted into the door bubbles. I've tried using color to indicate what material the door is made of - wood, metal, or stone.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think there's a dynamic conflict that can go on here.

On one hand, if the dungeon is so cramped that the number of PCs and their expected opponents can't manuever to some degree, that tends to create both boring and repetitive play. This is one of the complaints I have with overly small battlemaps in general, as its too easy for things to form up and never move.

That said, there's only so many maps I can look at and go "Why in the heck would anyone of have built this this way?" (ignoring for the moment natural caves and the like where I tend to focus more heavily on the "interesting" question). So I think both approaches can create issues.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

This is an example of a Dyson Logos map I like. As always, it's lovely. But this one has enough big rooms that I could run a couple set piece battles. That's what I'm missing from most maps.

 

[Lanefan]

This is an example of a Dyson Logos map I like. As always, it's lovely. But this one has enough big rooms that I could run a couple set piece battles. That's what I'm missing from most maps.

That map is a classic example of where elevation markers (0', +5', -20', etc.) would be a huge help. There's no way to tell whether any given set of stairs goes up or down, and there's lots of little elevation changes.

And which way do the damn doors open?

 

[Horwath]

when you need multiple choices in a dungeon:

 

[DEFCON 1]

Worth noting I also don't subscribe to the 3e-and-later notion that a PC fills exactly one 5x5 square. I'm fine with 1e where three of them can fight side by side across a 10'-wide passage.

This is one of the things I really liked about the WotC Star Wars RPG that came out quite a while ago... in that I believe each square was identified as a meter long, rather than 5 feet. I would presume that is also how it's done in European printings too? By identifying the distances in that way... it does make for more "realistic" sizes for corridors and rooms. Most corridors in a building are like 3 to 3.5 feet wide, meaning that a map that uses a single square for a corridor would be more on the money. And then a room shown to be 3x4 squares on the map, ends up being only about 10x12 feet... which is a much more normal size for a room than chambers ending up being 15x20 feet when using 5' squares. So 1 meter squares lets you get more squares into a room for movement purposes, without making the sizes of these places unreasonably large.

It also makes things a lot easier for counting distance when 1 square = 1 meter, rather than having to recalculate in the moment when 1 square = 5 feet.

 

[Horwath]

This is one of the things I really liked about the WotC Star Wars RPG that came out quite a while ago... in that I believe each square was identified as a meter long, rather than 5 feet. I would presume that is also how it's done in European printings too? By identifying the distances in that way... it does make for more "realistic" sizes for corridors and rooms. Most corridors in a building are like 3 to 3.5 feet wide, meaning that a map that uses a single square for a corridor would be more on the money. And then a room shown to be 3x4 squares on the map, ends up being only about 10x12 feet... which is a much more normal size for a room than chambers ending up being 15x20 feet when using 5' squares. So 1 meter squares lets you get more squares into a room for movement purposes, without making the sizes of these places unreasonably large.

It also makes things a lot easier for counting distance when 1 square = 1 meter, rather than having to recalculate in the moment when 1 square = 5 feet.

reach could also be more granular then.
with reach 1(normal)
reach 2
reach 3(10ft)

reach 2 could be for most 2Handed melee weapons and longer 1Handed
reach 3 would be for polearms.
reach 4 for pike.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is an example of a Dyson Logos map I like. As always, it's lovely. But this one has enough big rooms that I could run a couple set piece battles. That's what I'm missing from most maps.

A lot of choke-pointing, but has the virtue that since it isn't linear, the locals can know how to circle around those (and potentially the PCs if they're doing some scouting).