D&D General The senseless achitecture in most official products

[LuisCarlos17f]

I remember a chapter of the anime Detective Conan about a TV studio built as a labyrinth willfuly as a defense against attacks by terrorist groups. I remembe reading some an acient temple with irregular rooms as a trick against thiefs to cause disorientation.

And there is a old saying "in the dungeons you never find a latrine when your PC needs one".

 

[Bohandas]

It occurs to me that any dungeon on Dal Quor is likely going to be too sensible, given that its the plane of dreams.

Any dungeon with a fixed layout and where all the rooms fit together and make sense isn't really dreamlike

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

I once had the idea of a world where classic D&D dungeons, with all their illogical weirdness, started appearing everywhere and no one knew why. That way, I had a Lost-like mystery on top of an old-fashioned monster hunt.

 

[tetrasodium]

It occurs to me that any dungeon on Dal Quor is likely going to be too sensible, given that its the plane of dreams.

Any dungeon with a fixed layout and where all the rooms fit together and make sense isn't really dreamlike

Sure it can make sense. This is dal quor the plane of dreams not kythri the churning chaos. You need only look at things like the never nevernever in Dresden or the feyspires in Keith's books to see things built around themes. Also remember that it's the plane of dreams for all dreamers and quori live there not just a bunch of isolated demiplanes for each dreamer

 

[Imaculata]

Realism should inspire, but not dictate dungeon design.
In my opinion, the worst issues that a lot of RPG dungeons suffer from are:

-Symmetry. The designers do a lazy copy paste by mirroring the layout from left to right. While it is true that a lot of real world locations use symmetry, it does not make for exciting dungeons. It means that to the players there's no real difference between turning left or right at that central intersection. It all looks the same.

-Flat dungeons. Just because we tend to draw our maps from a topside view, does not mean that the dungeon itself needs to be flat. Dungeons are far more interesting when they make use of height differences, staircases, balconies and bridges. Consider for example that a large church hall could have an upper level. Depending on the dungeon, you may even want to challenge yourself and try a sideview for a change. Many designers don't include rooms that overlook other rooms in their designs, because it is easier to fill a sheet of graph paper by putting the rooms side by side. But in the real world, our buildings have plenty of rooms with multiple levels. Such rooms are also far more exciting in relation to ranged combat.

-Long corridors and empty rooms. The goal of a dungeon should not be to fill the edges of the paper. Adding pointless rooms is easy. But removing stuff is hard and often better. Trim the useless filler and reduce your dungeons to actual content. Fill your dungeons with meaningful content and leave out the rest.

-Purpose is not kept in mind. What are all these rooms for anyway? And what is in them? What function do they serve? If your dungeon is a temple, where do the priests go to pray? Where do they sleep? Where do they eat? Dungeons are so much better when purpose guides some (but not all) of the design.

-Linear progression through the dungeon. A big mistake that a lot of designers make, is having a lot of linear corridors with dead ends. Ideally a dungeon contains a lot of choices and hallways that connect back to earlier parts of the dungeon. In other words, there should be more than one viable route through the dungeon. Dead ends are also content that the players can easily skip, often unintentionally. It helps if there is more than one way to get to those areas of the map.

-Square room syndrome. It is easy when drawing out a dungeon on graph paper, to make every room rectangular. But it also makes for a very boring lay out.

Unsurprisingly, @Oofta 's example of a bad dungeon shows nearly all of these shameful traits.

Highlighted in red, we see the symmetry issue. Some symmetry is fine, but the central mirrored room is an eyesore. Highlighted in blue we see long empty corridors. These corridors often seem deliberately as long as possible, even when shorter routes were available, such as with the corridor to room 34, or the tunnel connecting room 18 and 21. Highlighted in green we see dead ends. Not all dead ends are bad, but they shouldn't dominate the design. Dead ends mean a lot of backtracking, and a lot of content that the players could skip accidentally. To improve the flow of the dungeon, any of the green areas could be connected to other parts of the dungeon. Also, most of you will have noticed that nearly all rooms in this dungeon are rectangles and there are no rooms overlooking other rooms.

Now, I'm judging this based on just the picture alone. I did not take into account any secret tunnels that may exist in the design but may not been clear from just looking at this map. I'm also not taking into account deliberate design decisions. But my rules are not absolute. If you feel that ignoring one of these rules the right thing to do, then by all means ignore what I said and do what feels right to you. There is no taboo on dead ends or long empty corridors just because I said so. Just beware that you don't overdo it, and take these things to heart when designing a dungeon.

Edit: I had a look at the Caves of Chaos map from Keep on the Borderlands... and oh dear, it is like looking at Oofta's example map, but ten times worse.

Imagine how much better this map would be if they removed half the rooms, and stacked half of what was left on top of the rest as a different floor. I was honestly surprised that they wrote "slope" at the top of the map near room 38. As if the designer realised very late just how flat the map looks. You also got to appreciate how they sanded the edge off the corridor (g) above room 20. It is like the absolute minimal effort you could possibly make to have the dungeon seem slightly less rectangular.

 

[jasper]

Psst @[U]Imaculata[/U] bing shotgun houses. And see if they make sense.

 

[Beleriphon]

Psst @[U]Imaculata[/U] bing shotgun houses. And see if they make sense.

They kind of do. They're set up to allow cross ventilation if the front and back doors are open at the same time, something New Orleans is in sore need of without central air conditioning.

 

[Lanefan]

I completely agree with your notes re Symmetry, Flat Dungeons, and Linear Progression - all well said.

But we diverge a bit on these:

-Long corridors and empty rooms. The goal of a dungeon should not be to fill the edges of the paper. Adding pointless rooms is easy. But removing stuff is hard and often better. Trim the useless filler and reduce your dungeons to actual content. Fill your dungeons with meaningful content and leave out the rest.

This sound to me like the "no empty rooms" design philosophy, with which I disagree heartily. Empty rooms can be used for many things: to heighten tension, or to provide a potentially safe base, or to slow a group down while they search, etc. Long hallways ditto, though unless there's a defensive reason they should go fairly directly from one place to another.

-Purpose is not kept in mind. What are all these rooms for anyway? And what is in them? What function do they serve? If your dungeon is a temple, where do the priests go to pray? Where do they sleep? Where do they eat? Dungeons are so much better when purpose guides some (but not all) of the design.

If the dungeon hasn't been altered much since it was originally made for whatever purpose, then this is all true. But the underlying premise behind many dungeons is that the PCs aren't dealing with the original occupants of the place, and subsequent occupants have made many changes, alterations, and additions - leading in the end to something that wholistically seems to be a chaotic mess.

An example appears on @Oofta 's map below: it's obvious areas 23 and 24 are a later tack-on, done by some burrowing creature or other, and weren't part of the dungeon as originally built. (which also means that bit being a dead end makes perfect sense)

-Square room syndrome. It is easy when drawing out a dungeon on graph paper, to make every room rectangular. But it also makes for a very boring lay out.

In spread-out areas like this map, what you say makes some sense; but where rooms are close together such as in a typical building then the most efficient use of space is adjoining square or hexagonal spaces, with square being by far the easier to construct. (also, for when it matters, the Dig spell takes out a 10x10 cube)

In fact, I'd say there's a quite reasonable amount of non-square areas on this map.

View attachment 117706

Highlighted in red, we see the symmetry issue. Some symmetry is fine, but the central mirrored room is an eyesore. Highlighted in blue we see long empty corridors. These corridors often seem deliberately as long as possible, even when shorter routes were available, such as with the corridor to room 34, or the tunnel connecting room 18 and 21. Highlighted in green we see dead ends. Not all dead ends are bad, but they shouldn't dominate the design. Dead ends mean a lot of backtracking, and a lot of content that the players could skip accidentally.

I absolutely agree about dead ends and "dendritic" design being poor, but that it could cause players to potentially skip content is to me a feature, not a bug.

The other missing element here is multiple entry/exit points to outside: the only way in-out is through room 1.

To improve the flow of the dungeon, any of the green areas could be connected to other parts of the dungeon. Also, most of you will have noticed that nearly all rooms in this dungeon are rectangles and there are no rooms overlooking other rooms.

A clearly-missed opportunity here, given that this dungeon seems to be on three distinct vertical levels. Mapping's a bitch when things overlay, but what happens if you take areas 13-21 and move them south while taking areas 22-34 and move them north, such that areas 1, 21 and 22 more or less line up vertically. Throw in some vertical accesses (with at least one stairway that goes direct from the lowest level to the highest), and connect a few rooms directly where they happen to line up, and this could be on to something.

 

[Imaculata]

But we diverge a bit on these:
This sound to me like the "no empty rooms" design philosophy, with which I disagree heartily. Empty rooms can be used for many things: to heighten tension, or to provide a potentially safe base, or to slow a group down while they search, etc. Long hallways ditto, though unless there's a defensive reason they should go fairly directly from one place to another.

Well like I said, this is my personal taste. It is by no means an absolute rule. And I agree that some empty rooms can serve a purpose. But more commonly, they tend to dominate bad maps, where empty rooms and corridors are all over the map. I believe that a map that is more densely packed with things of interest, make for a better dungeon crawling experience. This doesn't mean that every room must be stuffed with monsters, items, traps and puzzles. But I think it makes for a better experience if there's something to see and do in nearly every space of the dungeon, even if it's something trivial.

If the dungeon hasn't been altered much since it was originally made for whatever purpose, then this is all true. But the underlying premise behind many dungeons is that the PCs aren't dealing with the original occupants of the place, and subsequent occupants have made many changes, alterations, and additions - leading in the end to something that wholistically seems to be a chaotic mess.

Of course a dungeon can have modifications that weren't part of the original fictional design. When I talk about designing with a purpose however, I mean the purpose that the DM has in mind for an area (and not the fictional person who originally created the dungeon). A collapsed corridor or tunnel of a burrowing creature is a purposeful area. There is a reason it is there. But more often than not you'll see a lot of rooms and corridors that don't seem to serve any narrative purpose at all. This doesn't mean that every room MUST have a purpose. But in my experience, when you think about the purpose of some of the areas, you end up with a better result.

For example, if you're designing the lay out of a castle, how far would the kitchen logically be from the food supplies or the dining area? How far would the servant quarters be from the location where they do their job? When you think about these sorts of things, you gain an understanding that these areas should logically be closely connected to one another.

In spread-out areas like this map, what you say makes some sense; but where rooms are close together such as in a typical building then the most efficient use of space is adjoining square or hexagonal spaces, with square being by far the easier to construct. (also, for when it matters, the Dig spell takes out a 10x10 cube)

Don't get me wrong. There's no taboo on rectangular rooms. There are plenty of situations where square rooms make the most sense. But I think a DM should always look at their map critically, and ask himself if rectangular rooms are perhaps a bit too abundant. And if so, the right thing to do would be to mix it up a bit here and there.

In fact, I'd say there's a quite reasonable amount of non-square areas on this map.
I absolutely agree about dead ends and "dendritic" design being poor, but that it could cause players to potentially skip content is to me a feature, not a bug.

That's what I meant when I said that it could be done deliberately. But I feel it is often done on accident. I think a lot of DM's simply don't give it a whole lot of thought. This could mean that as a DM you're designing a whole lot of rooms that will never be explored. Having 'some' optional rooms is fine. But if the players take a right turn instead of a left, and end up skipping half the dungeon, then there's surely something wrong in the design.

The other missing element here is multiple entry/exit points to outside: the only way in-out is through room 1.

I think there are plenty of reasons why a dungeon might have only one way in. Especially if the dungeon is supposed to be some kind of cave or tomb. But I agree that it is a thing that DM's should give more thought. Plus there might be alternative entry points that weren't part of the original fictional design. When a dungeon has more than one entrance/exit it gives the players a strategic option to consider. I would however suggest then that it should be a meaningful choice. The entry/exit points should be notably different, and have their own advantages/disadvantages. As a DM I also like to include an obvious route and a not so obvious route (for example, an underwater passage that allows for a more stealthy approach). A DM should also be cautious not to overdo it. If the players have too many choices, their point of entry may feel irrelevant.

A clearly-missed opportunity here, given that this dungeon seems to be on three distinct vertical levels. Mapping's a bitch when things overlay, but what happens if you take areas 13-21 and move them south while taking areas 22-34 and move them north, such that areas 1, 21 and 22 more or less line up vertically. Throw in some vertical accesses (with at least one stairway that goes direct from the lowest level to the highest), and connect a few rooms directly where they happen to line up, and this could be on to something.

I think that would have done wonders for the map. There's also an excellent opportunity here for the DM to have pit traps that drop the players to a lower level of the dungeon.

 

[3catcircus]

Realism should inspire, but not dictate dungeon design.
In my opinion, the worst issues that a lot of RPG dungeons suffer from are:

-Symmetry. The designers do a lazy copy paste by mirroring the layout from left to right. While it is true that a lot of real world locations use symmetry, it does not make for exciting dungeons. It means that to the players there's no real difference between turning left or right at that central intersection. It all looks the same.

-Flat dungeons. Just because we tend to draw our maps from a topside view, does not mean that the dungeon itself needs to be flat. Dungeons are far more interesting when they make use of height differences, staircases, balconies and bridges. Consider for example that a large church hall could have an upper level. Depending on the dungeon, you may even want to challenge yourself and try a sideview for a change. Many designers don't include rooms that overlook other rooms in their designs, because it is easier to fill a sheet of graph paper by putting the rooms side by side. But in the real world, our buildings have plenty of rooms with multiple levels. Such rooms are also far more exciting in relation to ranged combat.

-Long corridors and empty rooms. The goal of a dungeon should not be to fill the edges of the paper. Adding pointless rooms is easy. But removing stuff is hard and often better. Trim the useless filler and reduce your dungeons to actual content. Fill your dungeons with meaningful content and leave out the rest.

-Purpose is not kept in mind. What are all these rooms for anyway? And what is in them? What function do they serve? If your dungeon is a temple, where do the priests go to pray? Where do they sleep? Where do they eat? Dungeons are so much better when purpose guides some (but not all) of the design.

-Linear progression through the dungeon. A big mistake that a lot of designers make, is having a lot of linear corridors with dead ends. Ideally a dungeon contains a lot of choices and hallways that connect back to earlier parts of the dungeon. In other words, there should be more than one viable route through the dungeon. Dead ends are also content that the players can easily skip, often unintentionally. It helps if there is more than one way to get to those areas of the map.

-Square room syndrome. It is easy when drawing out a dungeon on graph paper, to make every room rectangular. But it also makes for a very boring lay out.

View attachment 117706

Unsurprisingly, @Oofta 's example of a bad dungeon shows nearly all of these shameful traits.

Highlighted in red, we see the symmetry issue. Some symmetry is fine, but the central mirrored room is an eyesore. Highlighted in blue we see long empty corridors. These corridors often seem deliberately as long as possible, even when shorter routes were available, such as with the corridor to room 34, or the tunnel connecting room 18 and 21. Highlighted in green we see dead ends. Not all dead ends are bad, but they shouldn't dominate the design. Dead ends mean a lot of backtracking, and a lot of content that the players could skip accidentally. To improve the flow of the dungeon, any of the green areas could be connected to other parts of the dungeon. Also, most of you will have noticed that nearly all rooms in this dungeon are rectangles and there are no rooms overlooking other rooms.

Now, I'm judging this based on just the picture alone. I did not take into account any secret tunnels that may exist in the design but may not been clear from just looking at this map. I'm also not taking into account deliberate design decisions. But my rules are not absolute. If you feel that ignoring one of these rules the right thing to do, then by all means ignore what I said and do what feels right to you. There is no taboo on dead ends or long empty corridors just because I said so. Just beware that you don't overdo it, and take these things to heart when designing a dungeon.

Edit: I had a look at the Caves of Chaos map from Keep on the Borderlands... and oh dear, it is like looking at Oofta's example map, but ten times worse.

Imagine how much better this map would be if they removed half the rooms, and stacked half of what was left on top of the rest as a different floor. I was honestly surprised that they wrote "slope" at the top of the map near room 38. As if the designer realised very late just how flat the map looks. You also got to appreciate how they sanded the edge off the corridor (g) above room 20. It is like the absolute minimal effort you could possibly make to have the dungeon seem slightly less rectangular.

So, the Caves of Chaos map is not actually flat, it just happens to be drawn as a plan view with no elevation view. That's one of the challenges of such a big map being squeezed into the inside of a BD&D module cover.

2e and later editions have done a bit better job of doing an elevation view and then separating out each level as separate plan views, but it's still not sufficient in all cases.

The best representation I've ever seen is any of the HarnWorld interior floor plan maps - because they have map symbols/legends to allow showing overlay of multiple levels.