Dungeons sizes

[Jhaelen]

How about others? Do you use large or small dungeons? Worry much about how they are made?

I definitely prefer small dungeons. My campaigns usually involve lots of action in the wilderness with the occasional delve.

_If_ I use a big dungeon, it has to be something that 'makes sense' (to me). Most mega-dungeons don't fall into that category. I was pretty impressed by 'Castle Whiterock', though.

 

[Gilladian]

I like a mix of big and small. I'm currently running the Dungeon-A-Day (Welcome to the Dungeon! - Dungeonaday.com) and nearby in the surrounding area are a lot of ancient ruined sites for further exploration.

Since I'm converting everything to E6, it is all basically accessible to the PCs fairly early on; they're able to pick almost any location and make a stab at exploring it.

I don't worry about logistics beyond describing that food and water are available (dungeon bunnies, old fountains, etc...). How it was dug? Magic!

My world's workings include abiogenetics in a big way, so things can just "happen" to be there.

 

[Stoat]

I tend toward smaller dungeons, usually places with 5 - 20 separate rooms and no more than 2 to 3 levels. This is less because I'm concerned with realism, and more because I tend to get bored running larger dungeons.

This isn't hard rule. I spent quite a lot of time last fall running my players through a repurposed Castle Ravenloft (I kept the map, ditched Strahd, and changed out all the monsters). CR has something like 80-90 separate rooms if you don't count all the little tombs in the basement. Something like that is about the biggest I'd ever go. Any more, and I start wanting a change of scenery.

 

[Deset Gled]

Do you use large or small dungeons?

My dungeons are exactly the size of the plot.

Alternatively, a dungeon may house exactly enough XP worth of monsters for the party to level.

 

[The Shaman]

But as much as I'd like to use huge areas, if it doesn't fit on a battlemat its just too big to bother with.

Another reason I'm glad I don't use a battlemat.

 

[Stoat]

I don't worry about how they were built/excavated. But as much as I'd like to use huge areas, if it doesn't fit on a battlemat its just too big to bother with.

In the face-to-face game I ran, our game table had something like an 8 by 4 foot gridded space on it. The owner of the table printed out huge sheets of one inch squared paper and covered them with plexiglass. I literally set up an entire goblin village on that table one time.

I mostly play online now, which lets me use gigantic maps if I want to. I put the entire village of Barovia (from I-6) on one in-game map.

 

[Dioltach]

On a recent business trip, I had a chance to go into the medieval beer cellars in Nuremberg. (...) The biggest eye opener for me was how big the cellars were.

I just wanted to add, never underestimate the amount of effort people will go to for beer.

 

[Whisper72]

I used many sizes of dungeons, all depends upon the circumstances. Especially long time ago, I used to create 'megadungeons' in which the party would spend many levels over many, many sessions. Later, the dungeons got smaller, as they were usually no longer the main focus of the game, rather a small obstacle or more like a sidequest.

I am a great fan of the 'five room dungeon' project (forgot where it was hosted, but it has many a great idea), and use the concept often for smaller barrows / cellars etc.

Most of my later campaigns focussed on overland travel and adventures, city based adventures and exploration type quests, delving more into mysteries and histories then actual physical dungeons...

 

[Ry]

When Monte Cook started his Arcana Unearthed book, he mentioned that he liked his Giants because they justified the bigness of the dungeons in that world.

 

[Janx]

For a variety of reasons, I like smaller dungeons.

1) i hate tedious dungeon crawls (which may be an artifact of doing it "wrong")
2) I often use computer generated random dungeons, and I like them to fit on paper
3) seldom need a mega-dungeon just for the heck of it
4) lack of creativity in justifying existance of a mega-dungeon (though several real-life examples have been given*).

*I would posit though that these real life dungeons are more often Level 1 dungeons connected together, rather than the stereotypical Level 1 on top of Level 2, on top of Level 3... with increasiing dangerous critters inside (in fact real life dungeons seem devoid of orcs, green slimes, and mimcs) or even traps and treasure.