When D&D originally came out Gary Gygax more or less taught GMs that they should make huge multilevel dungeons that the adventuring party would enter and loot, killing the monsters who were guarding it. But in my case we were eager to play, so as GM I made what gradually became a big, sprawling, somewhat random dungeon. And it didn’t always make sense.
Megadungeon!
My dungeon was only six levels, and the levels were not the vast kinds of things we see in true “Megadungeons” where the graph paper map for one level could be as much as a yard by a yard. Quite apart from the huge question of why does the place exist, we had monsters living adjacent to each other who should be hostile but seemingly didn’t know the others exist, monsters living in places without ventilation, sanitation, or access to food. Inexplicable magics like Gary’s fountain of kobolds (IIRC), a continuous upwelling of kobolds in the middle of a room: where did those kobolds go, let alone where did they come from? One-way doors, secret doors, and rotating rooms placed mostly at random. We didn’t care, it was fantasy, it was a game. And it gave us a sense of wonder or of mystery, a sense of the fantastic.
There was a reason we created dungeons this way. The fundamentally nonsensical dungeon was practical to reduce the work required of a GM. (Keep in mind, there were very few commercial adventure modules at that time, everyone had to make up their own stuff.) I don’t think anyone can argue with that. Gygax's solution to the difficulty of worldbuilding (as paraphrased from Jeffro Johnson, author of Appendix N: The Literary History of Dungeons & Dragons, on Twitter) was to:
Gritty Realism?
When I play RPGs now, I like to feel as though it should make some sense, something like Glenn Cook’s the Black Company, a kind of gritty realism rather than wild (Dunsanian?) fantasy. To me the vast dungeon with unrelated contents and inhabitants, often no way they could even get in and out without running into others, no way to get air, no way to get food, is just plain nonsense. It breaks the immersion in the world that many gamers look for. Worse, there is no explanation for why this vast dungeon exists. I don’t buy for a second the “mad wizard created it” excuse.
So after my initial six level dungeon made primarily for my brother in the Gygaxian Megadungeon style, I kept my underground designs to individual lairs or to Skystone Castle and its environs.
Skystone Castle
Skystone Castle grew out of my thinking about how magic would modify military considerations (keeping in mind I have a PhD in military and diplomatic history, and when I first played D&D I was already two years into graduate school). In an environment where fireballs and lightning bolts are somewhat plentiful, where a charmed umber hulk or burrowing monster can dig underground and undermine any wall, a fortification in a magical world would look more like the World War II Maginot Line than like a medieval castle, with most of the fortifications and living spaces underground. Skystone Castle was an abandoned very large fortification built into an enormous rock that grew out of a featureless plain, and allegedly had fallen from the sky. Such rocks exist (though not from the sky), for example Traprain Law in the UK (though I think of it more as stone than as a hill).
The fortress was long abandoned. Creatures had moved in and made modifications. But I experimented with actually having creatures move in and settle down, as governed to a considerable extent by dice rolls. Sometimes those creatures could burrow or mine-out additional areas, and the map changed accordingly. Sometimes those creatures might live in the dungeon a long time and then someone else would move in and chase them off or slaughter them. Sometimes evidence of inhabitants (and battles) long past would remain behind.
This all made changes in the dungeon. It was like a game in itself, seeing what would happen, and of course I had ideas about what I wanted in the dungeon and that governed who turned up and how strong they were. The result was a “living dungeon” rather than a caricature.
I accepted the notion that the more powerful monsters would tend to want to live deeper, in order to retain the game-practical idea that the deeper you went, the more dangerous it became. Though in smaller such places the danger level was roughly the same regardless of where you were in the “dungeon.”
A Question of Immersion
I still use this method between adventures, so that sometimes when the party comes back to the dungeon it has changed in some ways, if only in the inhabitants, which I think makes for a much more interesting place to adventure in. “Clearing out” a dungeon and never having anyone fill in the space, as in the old Gygaxian dungeons, doesn’t make sense. Yes, it takes more time, but it’s a lot more interesting.
This is not a question of somehow improving sales, it’s a question of improving the immersion that is necessary for most any game. Wild fantasy is one thing; something more realistic, whether it’s the Glenn Cook’s-style of realism or the Tolkien-style of realism, is just as valid a way of playing RPGs in general and Dungeons & Dragons in particular.
My question to readers, then, is what kind of dungeons (if any) do you have in your campaign, and why?
Megadungeon!
My dungeon was only six levels, and the levels were not the vast kinds of things we see in true “Megadungeons” where the graph paper map for one level could be as much as a yard by a yard. Quite apart from the huge question of why does the place exist, we had monsters living adjacent to each other who should be hostile but seemingly didn’t know the others exist, monsters living in places without ventilation, sanitation, or access to food. Inexplicable magics like Gary’s fountain of kobolds (IIRC), a continuous upwelling of kobolds in the middle of a room: where did those kobolds go, let alone where did they come from? One-way doors, secret doors, and rotating rooms placed mostly at random. We didn’t care, it was fantasy, it was a game. And it gave us a sense of wonder or of mystery, a sense of the fantastic.
There was a reason we created dungeons this way. The fundamentally nonsensical dungeon was practical to reduce the work required of a GM. (Keep in mind, there were very few commercial adventure modules at that time, everyone had to make up their own stuff.) I don’t think anyone can argue with that. Gygax's solution to the difficulty of worldbuilding (as paraphrased from Jeffro Johnson, author of Appendix N: The Literary History of Dungeons & Dragons, on Twitter) was to:
- Have lots of space.
- Place lairs with vast quantities of loot
- Use random encounters to simulate an active, dynamic environment with very little effort.
Gritty Realism?
When I play RPGs now, I like to feel as though it should make some sense, something like Glenn Cook’s the Black Company, a kind of gritty realism rather than wild (Dunsanian?) fantasy. To me the vast dungeon with unrelated contents and inhabitants, often no way they could even get in and out without running into others, no way to get air, no way to get food, is just plain nonsense. It breaks the immersion in the world that many gamers look for. Worse, there is no explanation for why this vast dungeon exists. I don’t buy for a second the “mad wizard created it” excuse.
So after my initial six level dungeon made primarily for my brother in the Gygaxian Megadungeon style, I kept my underground designs to individual lairs or to Skystone Castle and its environs.
Skystone Castle
Skystone Castle grew out of my thinking about how magic would modify military considerations (keeping in mind I have a PhD in military and diplomatic history, and when I first played D&D I was already two years into graduate school). In an environment where fireballs and lightning bolts are somewhat plentiful, where a charmed umber hulk or burrowing monster can dig underground and undermine any wall, a fortification in a magical world would look more like the World War II Maginot Line than like a medieval castle, with most of the fortifications and living spaces underground. Skystone Castle was an abandoned very large fortification built into an enormous rock that grew out of a featureless plain, and allegedly had fallen from the sky. Such rocks exist (though not from the sky), for example Traprain Law in the UK (though I think of it more as stone than as a hill).
The fortress was long abandoned. Creatures had moved in and made modifications. But I experimented with actually having creatures move in and settle down, as governed to a considerable extent by dice rolls. Sometimes those creatures could burrow or mine-out additional areas, and the map changed accordingly. Sometimes those creatures might live in the dungeon a long time and then someone else would move in and chase them off or slaughter them. Sometimes evidence of inhabitants (and battles) long past would remain behind.
This all made changes in the dungeon. It was like a game in itself, seeing what would happen, and of course I had ideas about what I wanted in the dungeon and that governed who turned up and how strong they were. The result was a “living dungeon” rather than a caricature.
I accepted the notion that the more powerful monsters would tend to want to live deeper, in order to retain the game-practical idea that the deeper you went, the more dangerous it became. Though in smaller such places the danger level was roughly the same regardless of where you were in the “dungeon.”
A Question of Immersion
I still use this method between adventures, so that sometimes when the party comes back to the dungeon it has changed in some ways, if only in the inhabitants, which I think makes for a much more interesting place to adventure in. “Clearing out” a dungeon and never having anyone fill in the space, as in the old Gygaxian dungeons, doesn’t make sense. Yes, it takes more time, but it’s a lot more interesting.
This is not a question of somehow improving sales, it’s a question of improving the immersion that is necessary for most any game. Wild fantasy is one thing; something more realistic, whether it’s the Glenn Cook’s-style of realism or the Tolkien-style of realism, is just as valid a way of playing RPGs in general and Dungeons & Dragons in particular.
My question to readers, then, is what kind of dungeons (if any) do you have in your campaign, and why?
I did come up with basic reasons for its' existence and I spread it into numerous smaller parts. It's a huge underground fortification (the above ground part is mostly gone) dating from a series of ancient wars. Well stocked with magical affects / defenses, undead, miscellaneous dungeon flora / fauna, and various invaders and adventurers. It consists of dozens of linked dungeons with various themes. I still use the "deeper is deadlier" trope. Some areas are relatively small, others are gigantic. Various parts range from level 1-5 to levels 6-12. Essentially there are watchtowers, barracks, armories, mines, magical workshops, palaces, etc. There are various underground routes connecting it all up; tunnel / foot roads (with gated watch posts along them), "highways" populated by stone golem "trucks", underground canals and rivers, teleportals, magical gates leading to other locations... with the caverns of the Land Beneath the Land Above under that (this being an underground outdoor adventure). There are various vast architectural features / defenses as well. Given the history of the setting it makes reasonable sense. And, it's fun 
