For the Love of Dungeons

[Olgar Shiverstone]

The most likely mistake (and the one I used to make a lot and still make sometimes) is to design too many dead branches, creating a singular "path" through the level. As opposed to interconnecting rooms and hallways that loop around on one another. The funny thing is, this would actually be *hard* to do if you were trying, but if you're not paying a lot of attention it can happen quite easily by accident.

Imagine a dungeon level starting at A and the stairs down being at Z. If the rooms go A-B-C-D and then either H or a fork that goes to E-F-G and ends, it's still linear. There's a few more rooms to explore, but if G doesn't connect to I along with H, all you've done is create a dead branch.

This, I think is the reason that modern dungeon-based adventure design has failed -- people have forgotten that good design actually gives the PCs a fair number of choices about how to attack a particular dungeon, all of which are different paths to a goal. A lot of the 1E and BD&D adventures had this, and many of the later mega-dungeons, but lately (last few editions) it seems that the majority of WotC-designed adventures rely exclusively on linear design where the only choice is forward or back.

I find the encounter-focused design in 4E tends to encourage linear dungeon design, but it doesn't have to with a good encounter flow chart that has lots of branches.

I love dungeons, though I find for campaign purposes you have to have a lot of variety in them to keep them from getting stale. They're a great way of allowing the players a lot of freedom in approach while keeping the amount of DM prep manageable since there are still a fixed number of choices. But it does take some effort to do well.

 

[Ariosto]

I love dungeons, though I find for campaign purposes you have to have a lot of variety in them to keep them from getting stale.

Yes. People whose idea of D&D is somehow Very Serious, who hold strongly notions of "realism", might do well to avoid old-style underworlds. Indeed, they seem quite instinctively to recoil from the very idea!

The 5th edition of Tunnels & Trolls offers a very thoughtful and charming discourse on dungeon design (in Section 2.5 How To Be A GM). An excerpt:

Let your imagination go wild -- you can do anything you want to because this is your creation. Put in a lot of stuff -- nobody likes a dull dungeon. Humor is a good thing to have, but avoid being silly or juvenile -- ultimately you'll have to justify yourself and your production to the testing fires of incoming delvers.

To maintain freshness as levels become depopulated and players map them, the original D&D set suggests:
1. Make minor alterations -- blocking or adding passages or rooms.
2. Extend the boundaries of the map up to (or beyond, one infers) the edges of the paper.
3. "Replace monsters in new areas as well as those less-frequented old areas where monsters were located and removed sometime previously."
4. Reverse directions on the map, carefully relocating connections to other levels. (One could also rotate the map to some other orientation.)
5. "Add a passage which continues past the established boundary of the level, creating a split or sub-level which it leads to, complete with new treasure and monsters."

Supplement I packs a lot of inspiration into just three pages of "tricks and traps" and "monstrous tricks and combination monsters".


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| The Changing Context |
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Another factor that keeps the underworld from getting stale is its being just part of the campaign. Testing of the Dungeon! board game, IIRC, was said to have renewed interest in dungeon expeditions in the pioneering D&D campaigns (to the exclusion of wilderness adventures among a new crew of Blackmoor players, an example of how enthusiasms can fluctuate).

What seems a nearly universal problem these days is a shortage of players, and play time, relative to the resources that went into those early campaigns. Players' own schemes and intrigues and conflicts -- even unto wars, and rumours of wars, among Lords and Wizards and Patriarchs and their armies -- do not carry so much the burden of keeping interesting plots afoot.

It is, for instance, less likely that a dungeon shall be the object of expeditions by competing parties of players. Not only does that add the spice of competition -- who shall first get to the most prized treasures? -- but it adds a dimension of dynamism as player characters make their changes both to the physical edifice and to the ecology and society of the inhabitants.

Moreover, events within the dungeon tend to become more tellingly related to events in the surface world. (This is highlighted in the Empire of the Petal Throne game.)

In the absence of that "organic" development, it falls on the shoulders of the DM somehow to "simulate" the effects that lend vibrancy to a campaign.

 

[Dice4Hire]

While this is not strictly true, I *do* hate the punter races.

They are all punter races, just depends on the size of the enemy.

Though punting Orcus might be a challenge.

 

[Age of Fable]

I don't think dungeons have to be simpler, more combat-oriented, or anything else compared to wilderness or city adventures.

The main difference seems to be that movement is freer in wilderness, and more still in cities.

 

[Hussar]

I love me the mega-dungeon as well.

I ran the World's Largest Dungeon and learned a few things.

1. Do not make your maps 2D. Make sure that many, if not all the rooms, have a vertical aspect - stairs, balconies, connecting tunnels that are ten feet off the floor, pits, what have you. Adding a third dimension makes climbing monsters much more fun to run - they're the dungeon version of fliers - and it adds so much to the encounter.

2. Don't make room=encounter. Put encounters outside of rooms. Corridors with parties of baddies moving from A to B. Something in the pit trap. That sort of thing.

3. Drop maps as treasure. Often. The one problem I found with mega-dungeons is that the players lack any real information about their location. They cannot make informed decisions, so, every choice winds up being mostly random. Give them a map and now they can plan ahead. Heck, a scrawled piece of paper with some orc tracing his guard route is worth lots to the players.

4. Do enforce some level of "player skill" but don't be a dick. Sure, the players have to state they are searching a room, for example, but, don't force them to check each part individually. It just wastes time and becomes so frustrating. I think that when people talk about dungeon crawling being boring, THIS is the primary reason. Spending 5 minutes of real time checking out a room is fine. Spending 30 minutes on every room because the GM is a dick and makes you check each flagstone individually is not good pacing.

5. Not every monster wants to kill you. Add in lots of neutral or even friendly NPC's. A captured prisoner is a great source of information. That gnome that is working for the minotaurs doesn't have to be hostile. He can be bribed/intimidated. Which brings me to my next point-]

6. Don't be stingy with information. This right here is the number one cause of frustration for players. They actively try to get information about the setting, about what's in the next room, about anything, and the GM continuously blocks all attempts. Every captured prisoner would rather die than reveal information. Every neutral is a moron and has no idea where anything is. No one outside the dungeon knows anything other than the most basic of information. Don't do this. Infodump every chance you get.

Does it really matter if the players know a bit about the layout of a particular area? Is it going to break the game? I don't think so. It might give the players a bit of a tactical advantage, but, you know what? GREAT! That's ten thousand times better than having them stumble around randomly, opening door after door because they have no idea of where they should actually go.

 

[Chainsaw]

This thread is a must-read for anyone interested in dungeon design.

KNIGHTS & KNAVES ALEHOUSE • View topic - Key elements to good dungeon design 101

 

[Hussar]

Lots of non-rectangular rooms. Ovals. Irregular polygons. Perfect circles. Parallelograms.

Lots of irregular passages. 12' wide. 5' wide. Corridors that don't always line up with the grid.

Lots of secret doors.

Lots of curves.

Lots of everything THAT I'M NOT SEEING ON "MODERN" MAPS.

EDIT: I took out the squares comment. Dumbass me forgot basic geometry. All squares = rectangles. All rectangles != squares. :-( (underline mine)

I cannot agree less with that second line. Your dungeon maps, presuming you are playing with minis, are probably what you're going to use for battle maps. If the grid doesn't line up, you can't do that. Nothing bugs me more than 3/8 of a square poking out from behind a wall. It really, really doesn't matter. Move that line 3/8" and now the grid lines up with the wall.

The players will not care. Really, they won't.

 

[Chainsaw]

I cannot agree less with that second line. Your dungeon maps, presuming you are playing with minis, are probably what you're going to use for battle maps. If the grid doesn't line up, you can't do that. Nothing bugs me more than 3/8 of a square poking out from behind a wall. It really, really doesn't matter. Move that line 3/8" and now the grid lines up with the wall.

The players will not care. Really, they won't.

Not everyone requires their worlds to conform to the needs of miniature battle grids - if you do, then just ignore that element or adjust it to fit your scale. I think you are missing the more important point, which is about avoiding lazy uniformity that becomes boring to explore.

 

[Ariosto]

presuming you are playing with minis

... ought to be a looong way from presuming I am playing a board game in which everything must conform to a grid of "spaces" (square or otherwise)!

 

[Ariosto]

double post, so, hmm ...

Corridors with parties of baddies moving from A to B.

Yep. They are called Wandering Monsters.

Do not make your maps 2D.

Use of the third dimension is a Paul Jaquays hallmark.

Drop maps as treasure. Often.

As in 25% of "Maps/Magic"?

The one problem I found with mega-dungeons is that the players lack any real information about their location.

Not if they have taken steps to inform themselves.

They cannot make informed decisions, so, every choice winds up being mostly random.

Getting information is a choice that can be informed by experience and common sense. Or not, I guess -- but I don't see accomplished players going about their business in a "mostly random" fashion. It's not terribly unlike a lot of other pursuits.

Do enforce some level of "player skill" but don't be a dick. Sure, the players have to state they are searching a room, for example, but, don't force them to check each part individually.

Assumption: You moved the book case and ...
(A) found the treasure.
or
(B) set off the trap.

"When you assume ..." - !

Spending 30 minutes on every room because the GM is a dick and makes you check each flagstone individually is not good pacing.

It's not even 'railroading'. It's simply "not happening", unless somewhere terrorists are forcing people at gunpoint to play D&D.

Not in 30+ years have I ever seen "spending 30 minutes on every room". It's up to the players how much time to spend investigating this or that, unless they're trapped in each room until finding a hidden exit.

Not every monster wants to kill you.

Even those that do might want something else more. Whatever happened to Parleying, Morale and Reaction rolls?

Don't be stingy with information. This right here is the number one cause of frustration for players. They actively try to get information about the setting, about what's in the next room, about anything, and the GM continuously blocks all attempts.

Why? For that matter, How??

I ran the World's Largest Dungeon and learned a few things.

Most or all of this is addressed in such works as the 1st edition Advanced D&D Players Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide.