D&D General The senseless achitecture in most official products

[aco175]

It is weird using more natural maps since I cannot use my Dungeon Tiles with them. Plus it is unusually hard to explain the randomness of things like the cave floor not being relatively flat or the ceiling constantly changing heights.

I do find that newer maps are better than the old ones drawn to look like a skull or something, as if the players could see a cut-through of the mountain and see the layout.

 

[Tallifer]

Forsooth. The real world is much stranger and more unpredictable than people think. These ancient caves in Turkey are an awesome example of an underground maze/city.

This is the most realistic dungeon map ever made:

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

Above all else, a general lack of toilets on maps is what bothers me. So I am always relieved when I find a map that acknowledges the unacknowledgeable.

 

[Charlaquin]

Above all else, a general lack of toilets on maps is what bothers me. So I am always relieved when I find a map that acknowledges the unacknowledgeable.

I do appreciate seeing space reserved on maps for toiletries, but I don’t know as it’s necessarily unrealistic to leave them out. Depends on what plumbing looks like in the setting. Has indoor plumbing been invented and is it widely accessible? Is waste even disposed of via plumbing, or is it handled with magic?

 

[Oofta]

I do appreciate seeing space reserved on maps for toiletries, but I don’t know as it’s necessarily unrealistic to leave them out. Depends on what plumbing looks like in the setting. Has indoor plumbing been invented and is it widely accessible? Is waste even disposed of via plumbing, or is it handled with magic?

There still has to be some way of getting rid of waste. An underground stream where they dump their pots, a pit somewhere, a sphere of annihilation, something. Unless your dungeon is populated by otyughs that would would wading through poo everywhere they go.

 

[Charlaquin]

There still has to be some way of getting rid of waste. An underground stream where they dump their pots, a pit somewhere, a sphere of annihilation, something. Unless your dungeon is populated by otyughs that would would wading through poo everywhere they go.

Yeah, for sure. Just saying, it doesn’t need to be a bathroom as we usually think of one.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

I have a megadungeon in my companion where the first few levels are actually the fortress the PCs built in a previous campaign (set roughly 1,000 years earlier in game time). So when they delve it and find illogical floor plans and think "who designed this place?" .... they know who to blame.

 

[Hussar]

Whenever someone wants to complain about fantasy maps not making sense, I point them at this article by James Sutter about New Orleans.

Someone Just Pointed Out How Messed Up New Orleans Map Is And Now We Can’t Unsee It

Last week, James L. Sutter, a 34-year-old game designer and author, took to Twitter to share his critique on the real map of New Orleans. Sutter, best known as the co-creator of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, an expansion to Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition, took a look at New Orleans as if it...

www.boredpanda.com

 

[Harzel]

Above all else, a general lack of toilets on maps is what bothers me. So I am always relieved when I find a map that acknowledges the unacknowledgeable.

So, you can sort of feel your stress just drain away?

 

[MarkB]

Another aspect of RPG map design that can make it run counter to real-world logic is the "anti-fortresses" concept - that a D&D dungeon is specifically designed to break up the opposition into manageable individual encounters rather than allowing the entire population to easily mutually reinforce and overwhelm the small group of adventurers. So long corridors to space things out, zig-zag turns to break line of sight, and nice, thick soundproofing walls between rooms all provide reasons why you're facing five encounters against 10 orcs instead of one encounter against 50 orcs.