How many levels in your dungeon?

[Davelozzi]

My own city has (had) dungeons that had to be closed because they were large enough to be lost in it.

What city is that? just curious.

At any rate, like several others, I rarely use or create dungeons more than one or two levels. Any more than that and it starts to get illogical and the adventure tends to take too long.

I'm about to use Forge of Fury in my game, which has 5 sections, though technically it's really three levels, but at any rate they're all pretty small.

 

[Melan]

Ah, yet another topic where I will pimp Mysteries under Moscow, an article detailing the dungeons under that ancient city. Here are a few choice bits:

They soon went deeper underground. According to Mikhailov there are about six levels under Moscow, and in some places as many as 12, including old sewer systems, fountain foundations, and sloping drainage tunnels entangled in the depths.

The Diggers' concern has been heightened by sightings of groups of people dressed in camouflage uniforms. In a tunnel under the Centrobank building, the Diggers observed uniformed people in masks equipped with powerful halogen lamps. The Diggers were afraid to follow them lest they should come under fire. So far, security services have not taken the Diggers' reports of these sightings seriously.

Gruesome finds have also been made. While studying an old Moscow river, the Neglinka, the Diggers often came across human skulls. Similar findings were described by the Russian writer Vladimir Gilyarovsky, a pre-revolutionary explorer of Moscow. He wrote that long ago an owner of a criminal den built a tunnel leading to the underground waters. Inside the den was a pipe through which criminals threw out the corpses of those they had robbed and murdered. The Diggers made their way into one such tunnel and found among broken skulls a silver ring and a kisten, an ancient weapon similar to a large metal mace.

 

[T. Foster]

For my current campaign the dungeon theoretically consists of ~11 levels (give or take a couple), but to date only 4 levels have actually been detailed (totaling about 300 rooms). Except for a brief foray onto level 3 the party has spent all of their time on level 1 (and have still only managed to clear about half of it). I've got a rationalization of sorts of why anyone would ever bothering digging such a massive dungeon, but it's really nothing more than a rationalization -- the real reason is because really big dungeons are COOL and I've always wanted to design one, ever since I first read about Castle Greyhawk.

 

[eris404]

Ah, yet another topic where I will pimp Mysteries under Moscow, an article detailing the dungeons under that ancient city.

That. is. so. cool.

Who cares about tunnels under a university - I wanna game THERE!

 

[jmucchiello]

Lately I've been more into cave complexes than dungeons. Forge of Fury (the non-forge areas) is the kind of thing I like. You get the fun of terrain effects with the space limitations of being underground. I like have 3d effects in my dungeon. I especially like dungeons made for flying monsters. Stairs? Stairs are for walkers. Blank vertical shafts are for perfect maneuvering monsters. Spiralling curved areas for creatures with a turning radius. One of the Cauldron chapters in Dungeon (I think) had a beholder built dungeon. Disintegrate at will makes it easy to create multilevel dungeons with vertical shafts.

I've often imagined that there must be some strange artifact like the Star Trek Genesis Device for making dungeons. The weird bad guy goes out into the unknown, has a lackey dig a small hole and put the device in, arrow side down. Slay the lackey while concentrating on what you want your dungeon to look like, blood drips on device causing the arrow end to burrow out the dungeon, it matches your specification based on a Will save (or Int check), etc. The BBEG enters and learns how to bypass the traps and then calls his followers to the dungeon to populate it in accordance with his plans. The artifact teleports to the next worthy BBEG.

 

[DragonLancer]

I prefer dungeons to be now more than 3 or 4 levels deep to avoid monotony. Even I as DM get bored with countless levels and rooms.

 

[Death_Jester]

I am of the school of thought that says "how many make sence here". If the place was a anchent city buildt over the ruins of a minatour's layer then it would have more levels then just simple natual cave.

If it has anything to do with Dwarves it will be at least three levels deep however. (Just kidding.)

 

[Tinker Gnome]

I love dungeons, as a player I could romp endlessly through them, and as a DM I love designing them. I get a sense of accomplishment when my party goes through an entire dungeon intact.

 

[Someone]

What city is that? just curious.

Cádiz. The walls and fortifications were completed with a tunnel system popularly called "caves of María Moco".

 

[grodog]

For my current campaign the dungeon theoretically consists of ~11 levels (give or take a couple), but to date only 4 levels have actually been detailed (totaling about 300 rooms). Except for a brief foray onto level 3 the party has spent all of their time on level 1 (and have still only managed to clear about half of it). I've got a rationalization of sorts of why anyone would ever bothering digging such a massive dungeon, but it's really nothing more than a rationalization -- the real reason is because really big dungeons are COOL and I've always wanted to design one, ever since I first read about Castle Greyhawk.

T. Foster, we should compare notes on our Castle Greyhawk levels sometime---perhaps we can fill in some blank levels together