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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imaculata" data-source="post: 6757612" data-attributes="member: 6801286">Don't make your dungeon too big[ATTACH]71840[/ATTACH]No one is going to want to play your ginormous labyrinth full of pointless corridors and rooms. Drawing a huge maze is a lot of fun. Playing one however, isn't. If the only choice is taking a left or a right turn, then consider reducing the size of your dungeon to just a few meaningful rooms.Instead, take this dungeon that I designed:[ATTACH]71841[/ATTACH]The Tomb of the Pirate Queens is a simple dungeon, but rich with detail. Every room has a purpose. I won't go into great detail about what each room contains, but I'll quickly go over the basic ideas behind it. The players were helping an npc seek out the tomb of one of her ancestors, to complete her arcane training. Water is a crucial theme in my campaign, and so this dungeon was partially flooded. Arrows indicate the direction of the flow of water, and most of the water is waist-high. If the players want to move against the direction of the water, they move at half speed, and must roll a swim check. The main threats in this dungeon were of course undead, but also magical traps, pitfalls, water, puzzles, and structural hazards. Apart from the tomb, there were also other rooms of interest that were helpful to the players. The Hall of Legends had magical murals, which showed an important piece of history. As the players gaze at it, the murals come to life, and move to tell the tale. The longer the players look at, the more alive it seems. They start hearing the sounds from the past as well.The Hall of Dragons gave them valuable insight in the names and locations of known dragons in the region. Many of the corridors have collapsed. Strength checks, levers and explosives could be used to bypass various doors. A lever in the top left corner of the dungeon allowed the players to drain the water and open up the aqua duct, which gave access to the Hall of Legends. The most important detail is perhaps the Map Room, which has two balconies overlooking it in the shape of ships, and a massive map of the underworld engraved in the ceiling. It also connects the two wings of the dungeon, and several doors link back to it. The height differences in this dungeon provide for a lot of strategy, so there are lots of staircases and overpasses everywhere.I made a list of names for this dungeon of all the people buried there. So if the players inspected a tomb, I could tell them  who was buried there. The dead also all had their own popular phrase, and the players were so amused by this, that they started reading them all. Later on in the dungeon however, is a puzzle where the players had to choose the founders of the island, and match up their phrase with the correct person. So this detail eventually was pretty important.</blockquote>

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