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Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 6471476" data-attributes="member: 22424">That's not a huge surprise. Most pre-generated adventures just suck. Sad, but true.The problem here is that while the PCs are being given a choice, they don't have any context with which to make that choice. And, as a consequence, it's not an interesting choice.(There's also a problem in that a very great many pre-gen adventures boil down to "go into the dungeon and kill everything you find." Because in that case the most efficient approach is simply to systematically move through the rooms until everything is dead. If instead you give the PCs a specific goal, preferably with some sort of time limit, then their behaviour changes - that sort of systematic approach becomes less than optimal.)So don't build 'realistic' dungeons. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />With places like castles, or cities, or Star Destroyers, it's probably best not to map them in detail but instead to divide the place into key zones and have the connections between zones be fairly abstract. So instead of having 20 rooms that are all "servants quarters" you instead have one large zone that contains all those rooms, and gets dealt with in one go.It really depends what the purpose of the 'dungeon' is. If it's a labyrinth to be explored then it is certainly appropriate to map it out. And if the players have difficulty with their map, that's a feature of their characters being in a confusing mess of a dungeon!But for fairly 'known' places, you're probably better taking your "don't map" approach. As I said, divide the castle into several zones, and assume the PCs can probably move from one zone to another fairly easily.In a 'classic' dungeon, I recommend the following:- Most rooms should have 3 or 4 exits. This means that at each point the PCs have a choice: two routes 'forward' or they can go back the way they came.- When presenting the PCs a choice, you should always try to provide some context when making that choice. "Left or right?" isn't an interesting choice - might as well toss a coin (or adopt an SOP). But if left is a quicker but more dangerous route, with right being safer but longer then that gives them a chance to think about why they choose as they do.- Try to give every room/area a distinctive landmark. It's much easier to map the place, and keep things straight, if you can refer to "the room with the lion's head" or "the room with all the corpses" or whatever.- Give the PCs a goal other than "kill everything". Even better, give them three mutually-exclusive goals. That way they will have to decide for themselves which approach to take - do they wipe out the lizardmen in order to claim the magic treasures they have, or do they do as their lord has requested an ally with the lizardmen in order to guard against some other threat?- Don't worry about realism too much. Mostly because it tends to be less interesting than the alternative, but also because even if you do put in all the work it's likely your dungeon won't actually be all that realistic anyway</blockquote>

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