D&D General The senseless achitecture in most official products

[Bohandas]

Maybe the weird design has some occult significance, like the apartment building from Ghostbusters, or like Winchester Mansion in real life.

 

[Bohandas]

Unless you have a pet purple worm* I don't think it's that easy to dig through solid rock.

A beholder can do it with their disintegration, and they're loco enough to do it for no reason.

On a related note, the backstory of many of the classic adventures was that the dungeon was designed by a madman (ie. Castle Greyhawk, Temple of Elemental Evil, etc.)

More troubling are the occupants of the dungeons. What are they doing there? and why? and how?

 

[Samloyal23]

If a purple worm or similar creature "digests" rock, that means some of the rock is converted into energy, which leaves its body as waste heat. Another portion of the rock is incorporated into the body of the worm. The rest becomes "waste", which would most likely be some time of sludge since it has to be made fluid enough to flow through the beast's digestive system. It is no longer solid rock, it is mixed with whatever else is in the worm excrement, so it will be easy to dig through. Following the track of a worm will be dangerous, but it will make tunneling easier.

 

[Hussar]

As far as the "nonsensical" dungeons go, well, there has to be a compromise between "believability" and "fun to play in" as always. Sure, yes, absolutely right, there probably shouldn't be these 50 foot long corridors between sections. But, OTOH, if every dungeon turns into the initial encounter for WG4 Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun, where the entire dungeon rushes to the defense and, if the PC's are successful, the entire dungeon is more or less empty after that initial encounter, well, that gets old fast.

So, yeah, you should make the dungeon plausible. And, frankly, the players have to be on board. If the players are going to be asshats and pick nits about every dungeon, well, don't run dungeon crawls for them. It's just not going to be fun for anyone. At some point, again, there needs to be compromise.

It's very much like ship maps. If you look at most ship maps for D&D, they are WAYY too big. The Sea Ghost from Ghosts of Saltmarsh is about 3 times bigger than it should be. It's a 90 foot Hansa Cog, when Hansa cogs were usually about 30 feet long. It's MASSIVE. But, needs must when you're trying to run an adventure on the ship. If you actually have a realistically scaled sailing ship, it's almost impossible to run 5e combat on it. So, you have a choice - bigger ship or boring encounter.

 

[Scott Christian]

One thing with dungeons, especially alternate style dungeons (mines, caves, and sewers), it's pretty easy to come to a conclusion about the crazy designs. Mines follow veins. Caves erode from water taking the path of least resistance. And sewers serve areas of high (or once high) population. But a dungeon, particularly one with an Egyptian motif - maddening!
On hallways, I can understand a single hallway being long and large. Basically, if it's meant to be guarded or the walls tell a story, that makes sense to me.
As far as dungeons being built, not only are the designs insane, but often the daily living and ecosystem are even more insane. Who wants to remember that you placed a trap in the middle of the hallway "every single time" you walk down the hallway. Are the inhabitants living there? Then there may be kids. Oops, little goblin baby just died because we put acid above his bedroom door. This, and the "other inhabitants" that often come with a dungeon. The giant fire beetle that happens to be co-habituating with the orcs. Really?
But, I can say it is obvious designers have been thinking about this more and more. They give reasons why the creatures are there. The carrion crawler is the garbage disposal, the rot grubs are in the poop pit, etc.

 

[Scott Christian]

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

That is AWESOME!

 

[tetrasodium]

Closets, Bathrooms, & living spaces. You might have a kitchen & kitchen staff, but even if the castle is dead center of the impossibly deadly desert of instant death there is no servants quarters/wing/building. Top it all off with the fact that there is probably zero or maybe one bathroom or closet in the entire structure no matter how large it is.. That says nothing about guest quarters.

 

[Eltab]

It's very much like ship maps. If you look at most ship maps for D&D, they are WAYY too big. The Sea Ghost from Ghosts of Saltmarsh is about 3 times bigger than it should be. It's a 90 foot Hansa Cog, when Hansa cogs were usually about 30 feet long. It's MASSIVE. But, needs must when you're trying to run an adventure on the ship. If you actually have a realistically scaled sailing ship, it's almost impossible to run 5e combat on it. So, you have a choice - bigger ship or boring encounter.

My experience with sailing ships is limited to a tour of the replica-Mayflower.

You want the "unrealistically large" boat, because an accurate-size ship is so cramped there is not enough room for the whole party to engage the enemy (unless they Squeeze).

 

[generic]

It's very much like ship maps. If you look at most ship maps for D&D, they are WAYY too big. The Sea Ghost from Ghosts of Saltmarsh is about 3 times bigger than it should be. It's a 90 foot Hansa Cog, when Hansa cogs were usually about 30 feet long. It's MASSIVE. But, needs must when you're trying to run an adventure on the ship. If you actually have a realistically scaled sailing ship, it's almost impossible to run 5e combat on it. So, you have a choice - bigger ship or boring encounter.

OTOH, it might be fun to create an encounter where size restrictions on a ship heavily influence strategy.

 

[Hussar]

OTOH, it might be fun to create an encounter where size restrictions on a ship heavily influence strategy.

Yeah. Once. But, imagine running a naval campaign where every single encounter is using the squeezing rules. It gets old really, really fast.

It's like adventures that use narrow, twisting corridors. You'd think that it would be fun to have all that strategy and tactics but, what actually happens is one player gets to do 99% of the action while the other players sit on their thumbs watching. Paizo AP's were especially egregious for this in the early days - things like Shackled City and Savage Tide had numerous adventure maps where you were locked into tight corridor encounters.

Again, it's always a balancing issue between what's plausible and what's fun.