Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Dungeon Map Theory

(This item is crossposted from theRPGsite.com forums.)

If old school D&D is your thing, I heartily recommend Dragonsfoot as the premier source for such things. The forums there are fantastic, marred occasionally by anti-d20 whining, but excellent nonetheless. In the middle of a lengthy thread about megadungeon construction I found the single best analysis of dungeon map design I have ever seen:

http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/vi...asc&sta

If you ever do dungeon crawls in your games, do yourself a favor and follow that link.

(TheRPGsite.com discussion here.)

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous8:07 AM

    Ah, the timelessness of D&D topics :) It's fun to see that exactly the same conversations DMs have had decade after decade refresh themselves pheonix-like. It's even more refreshing to be reminded that they aren't _just_ the same old arguments about whether it's okay for the Paladin to take a stroll while the evil guy kills the town mayor :)

    I recall a particularly grouchy round of complaints about linearity in dungeon design when one of the third-party publishers put out Gygax's "The Abduction of Good King Despot" in the late 80s ... it was pure railroad, snaked around on a rectangular map to give the impression of a "dungeon."

    I may be misremembering and I apologize if I am, but I seem to recall that not only was the "dungeon" purely a story-construct railroad, but just to add insult to injury, the walls were explicitly enchanted to absolutely resist Passwall spells or the equivalent, should enterprising PCs _dare_ to want to explore :)

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