D&D 5E How to Stock and Key a Dungeon Traditionally(and tips on Dungeon Design)

[FallenRX]

It’s a difference in gameplay style. Empty rooms are important for location-based campaigns, where the challenge is in navigating the space and managing risk vs. reward while your resources slowly dwindle. But this type of campaign is growing less and less common in favor of more event-based campaigns, which very much are “moving from scene to scene.” In this style of play, an empty room is mostly just a dull scene, because the dungeon is less of an exploration challenge in and of itself, and more of a backdrop for the adventure.

Oh I agree for sure, its why I recommend the Five-Room Dungeon type stuff in the post, aimed at those type of dungeons, since I feel those should be on the shorter end in general.

 

[LordEntrails]

Personally, I think harking back to Moldvay and Gygax as to how a dungeon should be created is... limiting. "We" should have earned somethings in the decades since they wrote their opinions. Sure, there are things one can take from them, but it would like trying to use an Edsel as a base to design a new car. Sure, start with 4 wheels, but we can do better.

 

[FallenRX]

Personally, I think harking back to Moldvay and Gygax as to how a dungeon should be created is... limiting. "We" should have earned somethings in the decades since they wrote their opinions. Sure, there are things one can take from them, but it would like trying to use an Edsel as a base to design a new car. Sure, start with 4 wheels, but we can do better.

That was my point, I simply wanted to give a baseline for people to start with, the foundation, then people can get creative. I also went to give examples of other ways of Dungeon Creation, like 5 Room, Random generation, history, for people who wish to really branch off.

 

[Charlaquin]

Absolutely. This is something that works in TSR editions of D&D but really doesn't in WotC editions.

I don’t think there’s any particular problem with it in 5e, and I can’t imagine why there would be in 3e. Probably wouldn’t work with 4e though.

 

[Tonguez]

5 Room Dungeons are great and allow for theme, history and flexibility to be overlaid on to a standard framework.

I do tend to think ‘designing‘ empty rooms is pointless since they can just be handwaved in dialogue “you pass through the first few room and find nothing of interest…”. Of course some otherwise empty rooms may contain clues - but in that case theyre not actually empty

 

[Charlaquin]

Personally, I think harking back to Moldvay and Gygax as to how a dungeon should be created is... limiting. "We" should have earned somethings in the decades since they wrote their opinions. Sure, there are things one can take from them, but it would like trying to use an Edsel as a base to design a new car. Sure, start with 4 wheels, but we can do better.

I mean… One of the things that we’ve learned since then is that they actually did know what they were doing, and had good reasons behind a lot of their design decisions. Sure, adhering slavishly to this guideline is limiting, but it is good general advice for the kinds of games they were running.

 

[John R Davis]

I like a 12 room dungeon:
-The PCs can complete it in one session.
-Just enough scope to " tell it's story in that space", without needing filler
-Should tax the PCs resources so that it becomes a challenge to get it done in one day.
-Can make an interesting map, and is easy to map in session.
-Enough xp, esp in 5th ed, to gain a level after its completion, ( at low level anyways).

 

[TerraDave]

...But this type of campaign is growing less and less common in favor of more event-based campaigns, which very much are “moving from scene to scene.” ....

Yes, becoming less common in, say, 1992.

It actually kinda funny we are talking about dungeon design at all. At some point, it was received wisdom that the only real dungeons being run were modules (as they were called). A DM might come up with 5 room locations, but in their scene to scene games big dungeons were an ancient relic.

Join a game of classic D&D adventure!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

What purpose do empty rooms serve?

1) Realism? It doesn't make sense for the [insert dungeon justification here] to be jammed full of monsters?

2) Spacers? If it wasn't for the empty rooms the monsters in room 7 would kill the monsters in room 14?

3) Safe rest zones?

4) To lull the players into a false sense of security, so they might actually be surprised when the perfectly ordinary chest turns out to be a mimic?

5) Because I drew lots of rooms on my graph paper and can't think of enough stuff to fill all of them?

6) Something else I haven't thought of?

 

[John R Davis]

Clearly one person's " empty" is not another person's.
All hail Dungeons and Differences.