Dungeon: The art of a good location

[Summer-Knight925]

Through the decade or so I've been gaming, I've been DMing, Game Mastering, Reffing and whatever other names you can think of (even been a Megaverse Ambassador if you really care to know)

My question though, is after all these years, after making many dungeons and maps on a pad of graph paper...

What makes a good dungeon into a GREAT dungeon?

Is it description?
Is it theme?
Monsters?

what about treasure?

The obvious answer is "well all of these"
but is there 1 thing that makes a dungeon better than others?
Is there a single element that makes a standard 'halls and walls' into an epic delve into the mountain?

 

[Hand of Evil]

Connection, Purpose & Re-Availibility: I have noticed my players like dungeons that have a purpose and that they keep coming back to. Example of this is sewers and a passage to the Underdark, my players keep coming back to them.

They have very little treasure and the players don't always explore every passage way but they build a conntection to the locations, they know that the only short cut through the Troll Mountains, is the Mines of Iron and the Dark River.

You can have great bad guys, great encounter, but you have to have the players connect to the event. They have to have an investment in the location, villian, encounter.

 

[Gilladian]

I think it is the horrid concept - versimilitude. If the dungeon is unbelievable in the way it is constructed, then no matter how memorable the individual bits, the whole thing never quite gels as a "story"; and story is what we remember and cherish. Human brains revolve around story. At least that's my experience.

 

[Argyle King]

I think a good dungeon is one in which progress through it isn't a strictly linear thing, and there's isn't one right answer for how to get from point A to point B.

I also think that a good dungeon is one which isn't static. The pieces move.

...and, as mentioned above... versimilitude. Yes, by its very nature fantasy -as well as many dungeons- are unrealistic. However, that doesn't mean there still cannot be a sense of life, realism, and consistency given to the location. This somewhat ties into my comment about a dungeon being static. I can remember quite a few dungeons in which there were two rival groups of monsters who were (according to the story) sworn to kill each other. Yet, they live in peaceful static in rooms which are right next to each other, and there's never a part of the adventure in which their animosity comes into play.

 

[howandwhy99]

I think there is a balance between breaking new ground and a creation based on great expertise.

A great dungeon could simply bring so much new and groundbreaking material to adventure design that it becomes a beacon of what is great about adventures. On the other hand, it could have failed to really flush out that material or to see how the material interrelates to itself even (not mention anything that came before).

But a great dungeon could also be created, like an awesome piece of music, from already established designs. What makes it truly awesome is the extraordinary prowess of understanding and then knowing expression of these forms without being sloppy or absent minded.

Also, not everyone can play Mozart much less compose as he did. Designing an awesome adventure and then running it is two parts of DMing and both matter.