Getting out of the Spaghetti Dungeon

[Timely Drought]

Does anyone create maps that make sense? I'm talking dungeons, catacombs, fortresses, etc. They seem mostly to be a confused array of rooms and corridors. Often the rooms have no purpose, and sometimes they are locked away in the middle of a building where air cannot possibly circulate. It was as if these dungeons were designed by insane architects and inhabited by escaped asylum patients.

I've seen RPG books dedicated to dungeon building but often these are poorly written. I remember in some D&D dungeon building book they had a fortress where the second floor could only be reached through someone's bedroom (or some similar nonsense).

Does anyone do careful planning and execution of maps? Especially making sure the guards have barracks to sleep in, the cooks have access to a storage room, all the servants have someplace to sleep in, the horses have stables, etc. No mysteriously empty rooms or room redundancy. No traps in the middle of a corridor that the inhabitants walk through daily. No secret passages that lead from one room to another without there being a purpose for secrecy.

Am I asking for too much? Anyone can point to good sources?

 

[Minicol]

Hmmm ! Visiting medieval places help, but do not forget that fantasy architects have many more options than real world ones. Nothing would stop dwarves for instance to charm fireworms to burrow the rock to make air vents.

Otherwise, you could try using books on medieval architectures. There are medieval underground cities in Turkey, I even remember seeing an article in an old DRAGON mag about them, but I doubt you will find better.

Just an advice on the subject : never forget food and water...

 

[Khayman]

I may have some references and links back home --- I'll check later on.
For now check this:
Structural Modelling of Medieval Walls

The key thing to remember when mapping: walls are thicker than the lines on graph paper!

Take a look at a medieval church or similar building and you can expect walls between 2 to 5 feet for smaller structures, and more in cathedrals and the like --- often thick enough to support passages or rooms within the walls themselves (such as garderobes). Interior walls are usually thinner than exterior and load-bearing walls. Fortress walls are thicker yet.

Of course this varies by time and place. The Normans used stout walls partly because their walls and pillars were hollow with loose fill and thus weaker than solid walls. In turn, relying on the walls to provide structural strength meant that picture windows were not a realistic option. Wall fill had the added effect of spreading out the energy from cannon and other siege weapons.

 

[Timely Drought]

Hmmm ! Visiting medieval places help, but do not forget that fantasy architects have many more options than real world ones. Nothing would stop dwarves for instance to charm fireworms to burrow the rock to make air vents.

I can handle a bit of suspension of disbelief when dungeon crawling. But air vents can certainly provide interesting opportunities when adventuring through an orc-infested mountain citadel abandonned by the dwarves.

I'm just annoyed at the amount of people making dungeon maps that turn out to be a bunch of rooms and corridors twisting around, and being amazed at their creativity.

I've had trouble looking at real-world medieval location sources. They tend to be missing important details, like what room served which purpose, having a complete map instead of a few random pictures, etc.

 

[psyekl]

As a matter of fact, this happens to be one of my pet-peeves as well. Dungeons maps seem to be drawn without any logic, and are more of a collection of rooms and hallways than actually having a purposeful layout.

Obviously there are some places that are illogical by nature (caverns for example), but for the most part there should be some logic involved. Even a mad wizard is intelligent enough to not waste space (excluding the Winchester Mansion-type wizards, but these would be rare). I always try to justify my dungeons, which is much harder than most may imagine. Erosion, subterranean creatures/races and natural disasters are relatively good explanations for the design traits of an underground complex, but what other excuses are there for the smaller multi-level dungeons that don't link up to any larger underground area (ie the underdark)?

For me, the most problematic design consideration is water: How can there be a water source on level 1 when level 4 is possibly hundreds of feet below? Even if the lower levels aren't directly below, the water table will most likely have flooded the levels below this point. This comes up particularly when placing wells, since they are usually dependent on the water table. In cases where there is a well on the uppermost level of a dungeon, the water source should logically be below the lowest level, potentially making the rope hundreds of feet long just to retrieve a single bucket of water.

I for one like to design my underground complexes with logic and an attention to the living requirements of the creatures that created them by keeping in mind the 3 basic requirements for life: food (and water), comfort (which includes shelter from the elements, a place to sleep and for most creatures, sanitation) and safety (including security and the ability to respond to danger).

Ultimately I end up attempting to suspend disbelief and design a dungeon that will be fun and challenging without being too distracted about the "hows and whys", while paying enough attention to the little details to make it feel like a logical setting.

 

[Vidden Szantovich]

Location's History is a big +

Too many map maker's (and i've done it before as well) just throw rooms and corridors and caverns together without thought of their purpose. Maybe everyone is on their way over and you dont have a map yet or what-not. And as far as resources go Wizards doesnt give you much to go on. Everytime i think of one their sources all i can recall is the 2nd ed. DM's book that had the random generator in it: worst dungeons, ever!

If you are doing ruins, you have to backtrack, think about how the structure was once used for and its path of decay. Same with caverns, most have a flow to if they were created by water or fall along a major cavern if created by some geological event(earthquake or such). But I agree, too many DMs dont take these things into consideration when creating the dungeon, they map first idea later.

 

[Timely Drought]

The Winchester Mansion looks very interesting. Anyone know where to find a map of it? I've only fallen upon this: http://www.archidigm.com/lounge/project management/claremont_project.htm

This place is perfect for an alienist's home. Just populate with asylum patients running loose in the gardens, summoned monsters, experiments gone wrong, portals to other worlds, constructs doing mundane chores, and ghosts of the alienist's familly. Then throw the PCs inside looking for the alienist himself and have the villagers lay seige to the mansion with torches and pitchforks. When the inquisition arrives everything turns to chaos as the villagers are pressed into brigades under the command of inquisitors and begin the assault upon this heretical architecture of madness!!

 

[the Jester]

I try to have food, water and logical egress/ingress points in my dungeons.

Often, if there's significant water on the upper levels of the dungeon, the lower levels are flooded (I'm big on aquatic adventures, though we haven't had one for quite some time).

 

[Arnwyn]

Does anyone do careful planning and execution of maps? Especially making sure the guards have barracks to sleep in, the cooks have access to a storage room, all the servants have someplace to sleep in, the horses have stables, etc. No mysteriously empty rooms or room redundancy. No traps in the middle of a corridor that the inhabitants walk through daily. No secret passages that lead from one room to another without there being a purpose for secrecy.

For castles and other buildings - heck yes. I do everything you mention above.

For dungeons - heck no!

 

[Timely Drought]

For dungeons - heck no!

Why not? Do you do so because you feel that dungeon crawling should be free from reason?

Or do you need a linear encounter progression? Or some other reason?