The Lost Art of Dungeon-Crawling

There is a certain type of adventure that in recent years seems to have fallen out of popularity: dungeons.

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

"I Look Up!"​

The release of several old D&D modules got me looking at some of these old original adventures, and they are quite eye-opening on the subject of dungeon design. These are the first games of D&D we played and while some are a little dated, it's easy to see why they kept us playing. While almost everything in those adventures was dangerous, there was magic and mystery in the rooms you found. There were rooms with strange orbs suspended from the ceiling; mysterious indoor gardens full of medicinal plants, poison and monsters; ghostly feasts that share a tragic history; and mysterious keys guarded with fiendish traps.

I think I know why dungeons fell out of vogue. Way back in the early 80s we discovered city adventuring. Modules then became quests or investigations across a cityscape full of NPCs and role-play opportunities with all manner of details and cultures. This new way of gaming outside a maze opened a whole new sandbox. This change in adventure design opened new vistas for adventurers, but crowded out the traditional dungeon crawl as a result.

A Return to Form​

Luckily, in recent years we have seen a more interesting return to dungeons. More designers are coming back to them and trying to break the myth. Mork Borg has its share and a other ‘old school’ games have sought to blow the dust off the idea of raiding underground facilities. Its fun to dive into these lairs once again, and a simple diversion from what has become the usual kind of game. While I’m certainly more on the side of narrative play and character interaction, sometimes it is nice to know that you just need to pick a door rather than work out the villain’s plot and craft an elegant plan (that one of the players may just ignore anyway).

If you are thinking of crafting a dungeon of your own, here's a few pointers.

Give the Place A Reason​

Whether it is an old ruin or an underground laboratory, make sure the dungeon has a reason to exist and some sort of history. A hole in the ground isn’t very interesting so give it a back-story, even just a small one. It might be a tomb, an old ruin creatures have taken over or a lab where magic went wrong. It need not be especially clever, just as long as you can place it in your setting.

A Dungeon Need Not Be an Actual Dungeon​

What you are creating is a place full of rooms linked with doors and corridors, so it need not be underground. A house or a castle is basically the same, as is a sky city, large airship, underwater citadel or even a walled in town (put a roof on real world Venice and you have an epic dungeon).

Don’t Construct It with Only One Path​

When you are making a lot of cool stuff it is very tempting to make sure none of it gets missed. But you should avoid the temptation for having only one path through the dungeon that takes in every room. If the player characters miss out rooms 34-48, you can use them in the next adventure. Nothing is wasted. But if you insist they follow one path you are ruining the fun of exploring a dungeon and taking away the agency of choice. If you offer several different paths, when they enter the room of certain death you can point out with a clear conscience that they didn’t have to open the black door with the skull on the front.

Corridors Are Rooms Too​

Don’t reserve encounters just for rooms. They can happen anywhere in the dungeon, in corridors, on stairwells; anywhere the player characters don’t expect one.

Add Some Mystery Not Just Monsters​

While you will need a few monsters to fight to gain some treasure, put in traps and just weird stuff too. Not everything need be deadly, just something weird to make the player characters think can be fun too, if only to cross a room (the Crystal Maze will be a big help here). With magic in the world you can put some very odd places in a dungeon. Just imagine something that would look strange and enticing when they open the door and then figure out what it does. It might be a room full of glass spheres, a garden with odd looking plants, a table set for a feast with only statues as guests. The weirder the room the more the player characters will be intrigued.

Make Sure There Are A Variety of Encounters​

This relates to the above; don’t rely on one sort of encounter. Make sure you have a mixture of traps, monsters, weird rooms and role play encounters. Try to avoid having the same type of room twice in a row if you can.

Don’t Skimp on the Role-Play​

Even dragons might chat; just because it is a dungeon doesn't mean there are opportunities to role play. Trapped creatures, intelligent monsters under a curse or a contract and even the odd guard might be talked to as easily as fought. You can let the player character make this decision, by who they choose to attack on sight. But remind them that they can talk their way out of situations as well.

Make Every Door Worth Opening​

If you do the job right, each door the player characters come across will fill them with a mixture of fear and anticipation. What lies beyond this door, a trap, a fearful death, untold riches or wild magic? If a room or encounter doesn’t’ feel that interesting to you, cut it from your dungeon. Maybe consider it a little and use it later on when you’ve made it work better. A dungeon need not be a sprawl, and a shorter one has the advantage of potentially allowing the player characters to escape and try another one some other day.

 

[S'mon]

A railroad allows PCs to go where they want. It's just that the same stuff happens no matter where they go. You can't have agency without meaningful choices.

I guess you've never encountered a real railroad adventure/campaign. You're talking about Illusionism, the 'Quantum Ogre'.

 

[dave2008]

This lists the sequence of play most clearly:

Dungeon Adventuring - OSE SRD

oldschoolessentials.necroticgnome.com

Like I said, if you’re an old hand, you’d have internalised this framework. But imagine being a complete novice, cracking open the dmg today. It provides nothing. No explanation. So you buy an adventure, it lists monsters in rooms, that’s pretty much it. I’d guarantee a large part of DMs troubles with modern dungeons are because of this.

I don’t have a copy of BECMI or Rules Cyclopedia, but I do B/X. The description of dungeon adventuring starts on B18. The procedure itself is listed on B23. You can see the OSE rendition online here in the SRD.

Ok, not rules - just a description of how to DM things. Then I agree with @transmission89 , these are things we just do and have done for a long time. As such, you can just do them in 5e as well. To be honest, I haven't read the 5e DMG front to back (I just skip to the parts that are edition specific), so I didn't even realize there was no advice similar to this.

 

[dave2008]

If you haven't detailed a location before the players arrive, how can there be leads or rumours about what is there?

Easy solution: don't detail any locations. That is how I started doing things in 4e, just improvise everything and keep notes and adjust on the fly. that makes everything feel the same to the players. What I found is if you have something detailed, and then PCs go outside that area and you have nothing, the player's notice. But if everything is the same level of prep it feels the same to the players. It has made me a better DM and made our games more interesting I think.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Sanguine actually is the location of a Kobold Press adventure. Ravenguard, I have the ruler (I think it's a female Castellan) named, pic, Knight stats. More than that I can see it's important to the security of Ravensburg & Carmathan vs the bordering kingdom of Impiltur, so although it's a small mountain keep it will be well defended. I have plenty to riff off if the PCs go there.

In which case the work has been done, just like Barovia in CoS. Using 3rd party stuff is generally the best way to flesh out a sandbox, not just because of workload, but because if it's all by the same author it gets predictable.

 

[transmission89]

Ok, not rules - just a description of how to DM things. Then I agree with @transmission89 , these are things we just do and have done for a long time. As such, you can just do them in 5e as well. To be honest, I haven't read the 5e DMG front to back (I just skip to the parts that are edition specific), so I didn't even realize there was no advice similar to this.

But that’s the point, these procedures (or rules) can be done in 5e. I’m not arguing they can’t be.

I’m pointing out that this is why I guess perceptions have changed because they are missing from later editions. Which means, if you are a new entrant, you don’t know, understand or realise this is the way it’s “supposed” to work. Which is why the game morphed...

 

[transmission89]

In which case the work has been done, just like Barovia in CoS. Using 3rd party stuff is generally the best way to flesh out a sandbox, not just because of workload, but because if it's all by the same author it gets predictable.

. This is back to the original point. Because it’s in a dense book, it gets difficult to parse out and cut the cruft or keep what you like. Which obviates the “ease” of using said material instead of creating stuff yourself anyway. The slim modules allowed for an easier grasp of the overall picture, as well as giving you space for your own stuff.

This is just reliance on pre created content (which fair enough if you don’t have the time), it doesn’t necessarily make anything more meaningful than your home creations just because it’s in print...

 

[S'mon]

In which case the work has been done, just like Barovia in CoS. Using 3rd party stuff is generally the best way to flesh out a sandbox, not just because of workload, but because if it's all by the same author it gets predictable.

The necessary work has been done - but for Ravenguard I've just spent more time typing about it here than I ever did prepping it. It's the idea that sandboxing requires a ton of laborious prep work that I disagree with.

I definitely agree re using published material to flesh out sandbox, along with GM's own ideas.

 

[Reynard]

I guess you've never encountered a real railroad adventure/campaign. You're talking about Illusionism, the 'Quantum Ogre'.

As an aside, the Matt Colville's most recent Running The Game video talks about this quite a bit and it worth the time for anyone thinking about the differences between player choice and player agency.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It's the idea that sandboxing requires a ton of laborious prep work that I disagree with.

The work has still been done. It's just been done by someone who isn't you.

If you employ a cleaner does it make cleaning less laborious?

 

[kenada]

Ok, not rules - just a description of how to DM things. Then I agree with @transmission89 , these are things we just do and have done for a long time. As such, you can just do them in 5e as well. To be honest, I haven't read the 5e DMG front to back (I just skip to the parts that are edition specific), so I didn't even realize there was no advice similar to this.

I wouldn’t consider them just advice. That sells them short. Procedures are important to reinforcing and supporting an intended style of play. If you disregard the procedures in basic D&D, the game gets much more dangerous. The dungeoncrawl stops working because the consequences for making a mistake go from failure (possibly including some PCs deaths) to total party kill. After all, if we can’t trust the procedures, then nothing stops the GM from ganking the PCs or preventing their escape.

Obviously, people wanted to do things other than crawl dungeons for treasure. That’s how we ended up with generous death rules and other changes to mitigate the problems that occur when you dispense with the procedures. If 5e had really wanted to be the modular edition, it would have supported pluggable procedures, so you can do a dungeoncrawl or epic fantasy or whatever, and the game’s mechanics would support and reinforce that.