D&D General The senseless achitecture in most official products

[Oofta]

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

When it comes to large scale maps (not dungeons) I agree that most fantasy maps are not nearly complex enough. Although I do wonder who the **** named an ocean bay a lake.

 

[The Myopic Sniper]

When it comes to large scale maps (not dungeons) I agree that most fantasy maps are not nearly complex enough. Although I do wonder who the **** named an ocean bay a lake.

It was a lake in the 18th century, but coastal erosion destroyed the wetlands between it and the gulf.

 

[Nebulous]

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.

Looks legit to me!

 

[Beleriphon]

*purple worms leaving behind tunnels has always been weird too. It's not dirt. They can't just push it aside, they have to actually somehow destroy the rock or send it to another dimension. Maybe the purple dimension with purple rain?

That's a real thing in Marvel comics.

Several of the dungeons in more recent products are laid out like odd basements, but they make a sort of sense depending on what it is.

The Essentials Kit's Gnomengarde is kind of weird, but it is supposed to be natural caves modified by a bunch of rock gnomes.

 

[MNblockhead]

Sometimes I like to keep a realistic baseline to my campaigns, other times its fun to through realism out the window. Why is the dungeon this way? Magic? Gods! Mad mages! Chaotic Gods!

Why? Because fun-house mega dungeons are fun to play. Bill Webb says it best in his introduction to Rappan Athuk:

Once upon a time, there was an idea — an idea formulated by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson got together in 1974 and published in a little paperback book set (maybe you’re heard of it?), including a little tome called Underworld Adventures. The idea was simple: it is a lot of fun to go into a dungeon and kill evil monsters. Why is the dungeon there? No one knows. Why do the monsters usually fight rather than talk? We aren’t really sure. Why are there 16 trolls in a cave with a jug of alchemy? No one cares. What do all the monsters eat? We don’t know that either (although “adventurer” probably tops the list). And we don’t have to know these things. This isn’t an ecology experiment, it’s a dungeon — the quintessential setting for pure swords and sorcery adventuring.

 

[Lanefan]

I like to base my world on reality + reasonable application of magic, not "anything goes because magic".

But that's just me. If I'm going to have a "dungeon" (which honestly is incredibly rare for me) it's either going to be based on natural formations, ruins of old buildings built according to a logical real world plan, etc.

Heh. I once ran a dungeon whose floor plan was that of my high school, as best I could remember it, except mostly underground.

One of these days I intend to do the same except using the floorplan of my junior high school, which if you saw it you'd swear was designed by the same architect as did these dungeons!

 

[Lanefan]

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.

If it makes sense, I usually put the latrines outdoors somewhere away from the main entrance (often close-ish to a small hidden back entrance). If not, I try to include them somewhere - easy if there's any natural-running-water feature in the complex, not always so easy otherwise.

 

[Bacon Bits]

I guess I always assumed that there were several factors in the design of a dungeon:

1. They're built into natural earth or stone. That means they built passageways and rooms out of natural crevices and hollows, and they also only built where the rock will not collapse. They may also be built to follow natural ore deposits.

2. They're often not built all at once. But instead by succeeding generations, or latter residents. It's chaotic because it was never completely planned in the first place. New rooms were added as needed for whatever was needed by those residents. The Goblins needed just a barracks, kitchen, larder, and hall. The Dwarves needed a temple. The Drow wanted slave pens. The Mind Flayers needed reflecting pools. Then the Lich undermined several areas when he took over, and the small staging dungeon he built for his assault remains mostly in place.

3. People tend to build what's cheapest. They go for "good enough". Unless you have a high level Wizard, excavation is expensive work, and high level Wizards ain't cheap, either. Yeah, it's not a pretty layout, but it's functional and it's what we can afford.

4. Chaotic layouts are marginally better for defense. If you can predict the layout, you can guess where things are. In an environment where tunnelling and mining are legitimate ways to circumvent any defensive fortification, being difficult to predict isn't nothing.

 

[Eltab]

I've occasionally wondered why all these dungeons composed of regular rooms with square corners and a standard size - practical applications of Law and/or Order philosophies - end up populated with devotees of Chaos, by the time the adventurers get there. (See for instance the 'temple cave' from Keep on the Borderlands.)

 

[Jd Smith1]

You have to be careful arguing for logical architecture. I use a VTT at the table and every player has a laptop, so any jpeg or png file is a potential map.

I was running a zombie campaign, and I downloaded the floorplan of the London Apple store off the store's website as a possible encounter area.

It eventually was used, and after the PCS finished the encounter, they loaded up what loot was to be had, and looked for a freight entrance.

There wasn't any. Not even a stock room per se. Or a back door or service entrance. There were two steet entrances and a subway entrance. That was it. I realize that Apple doesn't sell a lot of bulky items, but still, this store was large and its inventory must be sizable.

I used several mall floor plans in the same campaign, and they are less logical than many dungeons (except for the regular placement of bathrooms).

So the idea that an underground structure that has changed owners and purposes a dozen times over a long period having been remodeled haphazardly is not at all strange.