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*Dungeons & Dragons
The senseless achitecture in most official products
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<blockquote data-quote="Shiroiken" data-source="post: 7881320" data-attributes="member: 6775477"><p>One of the earliest issues of The Dragon had an article about how to design dungeons that make sense. Even if there's no way for the players to figure out what the original use for it might be, each area of a dungeon should have had a purpose for being built (this article inspired the dungeon dressing appendix of the 1E DMG). I recently ran Sunless Citadel, and several areas were clearly part of the original design of the citadel... but most of it didn't seem to have any purpose whatsoever, except as being part of the adventure (such as a 10 ft corridor turning to a 5 ft corridor, then back to 10 ft).</p><p></p><p>An area might be tightly constructed, with only a foot or two between chambers, assuming there was structural reinforcing and solid design. Alternately, an area might be fairly spread apart because the area removed was of easier to remove material (sand/dirt), with only chambers and rooms actually carved out of the stone. I think the second option makes more sense from a dungeon perspective, as it's not likely that someone would excavate a huge area, just to build it back up with walls (basically the world's largest basement).</p><p></p><p>Above ground structures have generally gotten better over the years, but some of them are obviously just dungeons with a different name. A temple should make sense as a temple, and the encounters designed around it, not vice versa!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Shiroiken, post: 7881320, member: 6775477"] One of the earliest issues of The Dragon had an article about how to design dungeons that make sense. Even if there's no way for the players to figure out what the original use for it might be, each area of a dungeon should have had a purpose for being built (this article inspired the dungeon dressing appendix of the 1E DMG). I recently ran Sunless Citadel, and several areas were clearly part of the original design of the citadel... but most of it didn't seem to have any purpose whatsoever, except as being part of the adventure (such as a 10 ft corridor turning to a 5 ft corridor, then back to 10 ft). An area might be tightly constructed, with only a foot or two between chambers, assuming there was structural reinforcing and solid design. Alternately, an area might be fairly spread apart because the area removed was of easier to remove material (sand/dirt), with only chambers and rooms actually carved out of the stone. I think the second option makes more sense from a dungeon perspective, as it's not likely that someone would excavate a huge area, just to build it back up with walls (basically the world's largest basement). Above ground structures have generally gotten better over the years, but some of them are obviously just dungeons with a different name. A temple should make sense as a temple, and the encounters designed around it, not vice versa! [/QUOTE]
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The senseless achitecture in most official products
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