Basic Fantasy RPG Forums

Fellow masters of dungeons and adventurers,

I've been making up adventures and building dungeons for twenty years or so now and have kind of hit a snag. As much fun as building dungeons is, there really don't seem to be too many ways of doing it. The typical advice of thinking very hard about all of the details of the dungeon and its inhabitants has never really helped me to build anything interesting in the same way the the old five room dungeon formula has and I can only use that so many times before finding myself in a bit of a rut.

Are there other ways to go about dungeon creation that don't involve just letting a computer randomize one? What techniques have you used in dungeon creation? Is there a specific method or formula you tend to stick with, or do you just build what looks cool and hope for the best?

I await your response,

Arty G.

I pretty much have to force many of my players to go into dungeons.

They all seem to prefer it up top, where they can see better, and there are more tactical options (places to run away).

They only go down below if there's some pretty compelling reason. Like, if the dungeon contains the key to some important aspect of the game. The speculative chance of "some loot" is usually not enough.

I have a table-top game running and last year I had my players discover a map to an old dungeon hidden beneath a goblin fort on an island...and they totally ignored it and went in the other direction.

They also found an ancient tunnel hidden beneath a bridge, leading into the riverbank, half-flooded but still accessible. Again, they totally ignored it. They said they didn't want to get wet.

Right now my PbP party are tossing up whether to explore a sealed chamber in an ancient temple, rumored to be haunted. Most of them don't want to do it.

Sigh

As a map maker, I often approach a map with an idea of what it used to be, not what it is today. I come from the realm of thinking that dungeons are old places, having come from a previous era, and have been repurposed (recycled if you want to go all modern). So I start with an idea, say a "dwarven fortress that guarded a major trade route" and draw the map from there. What would they have needed? Was it small or large? What rooms would they have needed? Etc, etc.

Then I demolish the place. Dwarven were ran out by __________, hundreds of years ago. Over the decades the places has been taken over and recycled numerous times. Today the _______ have moved into the abandoned place and made it there home. They will need a place to sleep, eat, a guard area, a place to torture the scummy humans and elves they capture, etc etc. Then I design each room utilizing that idea.

The bottom line is that I think of the story of the place....not just it being a place to plunder, but the history that goes into the place. I do not go too deep into the history, but just enough to make it interesting.

I follow Matt's line of thinking. Instead of just being a dungeon, caves, etc. I try to think of an interesting locale or architecture, and it's more fun if it's something that was never intended to house a random smorgasbord of nasties, traps, and treasures.

mattjackson wrote:As a map maker, I often approach a map with an idea of what it used to be, not what it is today. I come from the realm of thinking that dungeons are old places, having come from a previous era, and have been repurposed (recycled if you want to go all modern). So I start with an idea, say a "dwarven fortress that guarded a major trade route" and draw the map from there. What would they have needed? Was it small or large? What rooms would they have needed? Etc, etc.

Then I demolish the place. Dwarven were ran out by __________, hundreds of years ago. Over the decades the places has been taken over and recycled numerous times. Today the _______ have moved into the abandoned place and made it there home. They will need a place to sleep, eat, a guard area, a place to torture the scummy humans and elves they capture, etc etc. Then I design each room utilizing that idea.

The bottom line is that I think of the story of the place....not just it being a place to plunder, but the history that goes into the place. I do not go too deep into the history, but just enough to make it interesting.

Thanks for trying to help, but I've tried that and found it tedious. I have a lot of trouble making good encounters out of it. This sounds like the "thinking very hard about all of the details of the dungeon and its inhabitants" thing that just doesn't really do it for me. I don't want to just make random ruins, I want to make dungeons that are unique and memorable. I want something full of traps and encounters and the moment I start thinking of it as being a place in which these weird critters live it doesn't make sense that they would fill it with puzzles and traps.

What happens when Olgrath the Orc Lord has to get up for a leak in the middle of the night? Does he wander through the Trapped Chamber of the Forgotten God, hang a left down the Hallway of Nasty Death, and then find the secret passage in the Chamber of Cursed Stuff just to get to the privy while half-asleep and bleary-eyed? Why would he have set deadly traps and nigh-impossible puzzles in his own home? It all just sounds off to me.

I get that these dungeons are where a lot of these creatures live, but treating them that way first and foremost instead of as dungeons just turns into exploring someone else's house and that doesn't sound like the stuff of high fantasy.

Firstly I recommend reading this: http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/201 ... -trap.html and just about everything else on the blog. As opinionated and self-righteous as it might be; there is usually some truth behind it and it is always well thought out.

Now onto what works for me.
I tend toward two methods for making dungeons that don't follow the 5 room method. They each have their pros and cons, and I often mix them.
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The "Makes Sense" Method. This sort of mimics what has been said.

1. What was it originally?
2. How and/or why did is it different now?
3. What is there now?

I hardly ever go into much detail about the first two. They aren't usually that useful, unless it is a relatively "new" dungeon (e.g. a monastery recently overrun by undead). However it helps me think of challenges and Easter eggs to put in that show (rather than tell) what might have happened.

An example is the Mines of Moria.
1. It was a Dwarven stronghold and mine.
2. They dug too deep and unleashed something terrible.
3. Hordes of orcs and other unmentionables live there now; mostly unknown to the fellowship.
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The Metroidvania Method.

After analyzing the titular video games I realized why I found them fun (This would probably warrant an entire discussion on it's own).

Here I just think of things I want to put in. These usually follow the traditional "monster, trap, treasure, trick, and special," but can be anything of interest. These become my "centerpieces." I then take some paper and mark where they are. If it's an entry way it's probably near the edge, whereas a vault might be near the center. Then I connect them in a semi-logical way with lesser rooms and intersections and twisting paths in between and I'm basically done. It's important to have the lesser rooms because they add suspense for the party, and give me somewhere to put anything I might think of later.

*Note: no room should be empty unless the room is the centerpiece itself. Even then it should be set apart from the other places in the dungeon.

Also centerpieces don't have to be big; they just have to be interesting. A skeleton by a small pool of water in some "side room" will be interesting to most players. Is the skeleton animated? Is the water poisonous? Is there something in the water the party might want?
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Now when I make a dungeon I typically use a bit of both methods. I think of things I want in the dungeon, then I think about what the dungeon is, which gives me more ideas. Even if I'm not using the makes sense method explicitly, my dungeons often have a theme that helps tie everything together, and the same sort of thinking helps to flesh out and rationalize my ideas.
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A final note: What story (if any) do you want to tell? If the story is completely based around the player's actions then you probably don't need much in the way of backstory. But if you want to show a piece of the world, then you will need something for the players to discover and piece together. After all it is a game, and some players see the story itself as a reward. For more on this the YouTube channel Extra Credits recently made a video about story telling and information density which you can find here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghrI2Vb ... J6OCk1XB1p.

Wow, do you guys make this hard work or what?

If I have a special enemy in mind, I create that character/monster first, followed by his/her/its allies.

I draw up my dungeon on graph paper with an actual pencil. If I have a plan in mind, I try to follow it, but I don't always have a plan; when I don't, I just draw what looks good to me.

After numbering the rooms on my map(s), I generate random contents using the tables in the Core Rules. Actually, since I'm really lazy I use the generator in the Tools section of the website, but it uses those tables along with a few adjunct descriptive bits.

I look over the contents I've generated, replacing some of the monsters with my special enemy and/or minions as noted above. Some rooms get moved around or changed to suit my preferences... everything is open to being changed.

Voila! Now I have a dungeon map and a usable key. If I'm just using the adventure with my friends, I'm done at this point. Adding all the descriptive frippery and cleaning up the layout is only done for those adventures I plan to publish.

See also my blog post here: http://basicfantasy.org/blog/?p=127

I like this:

http://basicfantasy.org/dungeoneer.html

Solomoriah wrote:Wow, do you guys make this hard work or what?

If I have a special enemy in mind, I create that character/monster first, followed by his/her/its allies.

I draw up my dungeon on graph paper with an actual pencil. If I have a plan in mind, I try to follow it, but I don't always have a plan; when I don't, I just draw what looks good to me.

After numbering the rooms on my map(s), I generate random contents using the tables in the Core Rules. Actually, since I'm really lazy I use the generator in the Tools section of the website, but it uses those tables along with a few adjunct descriptive bits.

I look over the contents I've generated, replacing some of the monsters with my special enemy and/or minions as noted above. Some rooms get moved around or changed to suit my preferences... everything is open to being changed.

Voila! Now I have a dungeon map and a usable key. If I'm just using the adventure with my friends, I'm done at this point. Adding all the descriptive frippery and cleaning up the layout is only done for those adventures I plan to publish.

See also my blog post here: http://basicfantasy.org/blog/?p=127

Honestly, how difficult it is completely depends on what/who I'm making the dungeon for. Usually it's easier than it sounds.

Mostly I go along with my "Metroidvania" approach which is pretty similar to your method. However if the dungeon is part of a larger story that I want to tell, being entered in a contest, or being used to introduce new players then I will spend some extra effort to make it neat, and "make sense."

In fact the whole reason I avoid using large groups of intelligent creatures is because I don't want to worry about things "making sense." *

Another reason it's easier than it sounds is because I follow the advice in the 4e DMG (ch. 5 non-combat encounters, pg. 82): "Unless you have a particular fondness or facility... the best way... is to steal shamelessly," (not words to live by ) so I'm constantly drawing from movies, books, video games, etc. and the internet has made this laughably easy.
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Also There are two other tools I forgot to mention: Dwarf Fortress (which is free) and How to host a dungeon by Tony Dowler (which is sort of free). These fall into random generation.

Dwarf fortress will generate an entire world. Yes map, history, civilizations, rulers, heroes, villains, villain's mother, villain's grandmother, villain's seventh cousin twice removed, and all of their personalities, notable deeds, and causes of death. Everything. You don't even have to play the game. you just have to generate a world, and look at the lore.

How to Host a Dungeon is more of a mini-game really, but at the end you have a usable side view dungeon map with a brief history, that you create with dice, paper, pens, pencils, and some small colored beads (or equivalent). Unfortunately I can't legally share the PDF here. Fortunately there are free rules, courtesy of the author, here: http://howtohostadungeon.wikia.com/wiki/Rules
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*For context my group consists of six math and physics majors. They spend most of their time trying to figure out how our world works; so when something doesn't fit logically with the "established laws of the game world" they either freak out, or spend a lot of time on tangents. The benefit is that I can throw all sorts of puzzles at them without worrying they will jump to poor conclusions.

Clever_Munkey wrote: Also There are two other tools I forgot to mention: Dwarf Fortress (which is free) and How to host a dungeon by Tony Dowler (which is sort of free). These fall into random generation.

Dwarf fortress will generate an entire world. Yes map, history, civilizations, rulers, heroes, villains, villain's mother, villain's grandmother, villain's seventh cousin twice removed, and all of their personalities, notable deeds, and causes of death. Everything. You don't even have to play the game. you just have to generate a world, and look at the lore.

I've used Dwarf Fortress to generate worlds I later used in campaigns as well. It's quite helpful for randomly creating a lot of important lore that most game worlds need (as well as some not so important lore).

I know I'm kind of off topic here. Sorry about that.