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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3680678" data-attributes="member: 4937">In this case, go with realistic.  Before a setting can be emmersive, it has to look right.  If you stick to gamist concepts that work well as battle mats, I can gaurantee you that your players will never envision what that place looks like in thier heads.  Instead, they will see the battle taking place in the mental space of the battlemap between minatures.  They won't actually be involved, and the space in which the battle took place will never be in the quasi-real place of a player's imagination.  It turns an RPG into a tactical wargame.  You might as well play ASL.By making the setting realistic and intricate, you encourage the players to engage thier imagination.  This ultimately leads to a much more satisfying experience.Now, there are some caveats.  Don't overuse narrow corridors, and 'rig' your encounters so that they don't generally occur in corridors (or if they do, make sure that they are not static, that is, make sure one side gives or has to give).  Plan your dungeon with a realistic mix of small spaces and spaces large enough to contain your battles.It's possible to be realistic and have alot of space.  Cathedrals, abbeys, insulas, and castles all have large enclosed spaces - either rooms or courtyards.  If you need space, plan your main battles to occur in those spaces.  This is both interesting and realistic (castle courtyards were designed as killing grounds).  Any temple complexes is usually designed as large public places to accomodate many celebrants.  So its possible to have plenty of space and also narrow corridors and small rooms dependig on the section of the structure you are in.   Caves likewise have this complexity.  The largest open space I've been in a cave is larger than the largest space I've ever been in a fantasy dungeon (under world 'outdoors' maps excluded).  Conversely, the smallest space I've been in in a cave is smaller than the smallest place I've ever been in a fantasy dungeon.  Another good thing to keep in mind is that some structures in a fantasy game might have no parallel in the real world, and so there is no way you can say that thier broad corridors are 'unrealistic'. Where I tend to drop realism in favor of fun in fantasy architecture is in two things: economics and symmetry. Realistically, most structures have a high degree of symmetry.  It's just easier to design and build things that way, and symmetry is often very appealing visually.  Classical architecture is almost always symmetrical.   On the other hand, symmetry is highly unappealing in a dungeon.  While I generally recommend designing dungeons from life (real world structures), I do suggest that you look at how architectures incorporate assymetry into buildings and then overuse these devices to a degree that real world buildings wouldn't.  Realistically, most buildings and excauvations are limited by economics to being quite small and uninteresting.  In my games, I tend to pattern an average structure after the larger sorts of examples of thier type in the world (big Edwardian or Crusader castles, for example), and to have truly epic structures which are far larger than the largest real world examples.  Most players could care less about the economics of building and maintaining a structure, and you can pretty much handwave the wealth level of whatever society or person built the original structure.  Besides, D&D builders have access to giants, magic, genies, and all sorts of other things that ancient real world builders didn't.  It wouldn't at all be surprising if they built bigger and grander than even the big grand things of antiquity.  That isn't to say that its usual to dungeoneer in such large structures, but they are there if I want them.</blockquote>

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