Like Patrick, I first studied the art of dungeon design at the feet of Tom Moldvay and Moldvay Basic is one of the places I go back to when starting such an undertaking. . But the other big influence early on was Gygax. Module B2 The Keep on the Borderlands stands right alongside Moldvay's Haunted Keep in my personal dungeon mythology. And a year or so after leaping into this crazy hobby I got my Dungeon Master's Guide, which contains my alltime favorite mechanical toy, Appendix A: Random Dungeon Generation.
Some people dig random dungeons and some people don't and I totally respect the opinions of those who don't. Me, I like throwing a bunch of dice, looking at some crazy charts, and trying to impose some rhyme (and maybe a little reason) to the results. Some of my best dungeons grew out of adding just a little vision and personality to an otherwise nonsensical set of random results.
One of the best parts of Appendix A is this neat little illo:
Man, I couldn't tell you the number of dungeons I've seen where the starting room had one or two avenues of exploration. Weak sauce. A good dungeon is all about presenting the party with a bunch of tough choices, many of which have to be decided upon with insufficient information. Gygax's starting areas provide the party with between five and nine possible routes deeper into underworld. This arrangement gets the party thinking, discussing, planning, maybe even arguing without so much as a single bit of dungeon dressing or a single monster yet in play.
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Exactly!
ReplyDeleteI think randomness in dungeon creation or generally in the use of tables gives the DM the feeling he is playing too. He is exploring a little ahead of the party.
ReplyDeleteAppendix A is all sorts of awesome.
ReplyDeleteGood point on multiple points of entry and egress for rooms. I found that to be a weakness of my megadungeon when I got the chance to run it: too many rooms only had one or two ways out. It made some sections too linear.
Man, I couldn't tell you the number of dungeons I've seen where the starting room had one or two avenues of exploration. Weak sauce.
ReplyDeleteIME (and I could be totally wrong on this), a lot of dungeons that have some kind of storyline that the characters are trying to work through are like that. Don't put too many options in there, or the players may derail the story altogether.
It could be that, or it could be that a lot of dungeon designers are overly influenced by The Legend of Zelda :)
I'm currently working on a Mutant Future "dungeon" that I realized had this problem the other day - I'd only provided two entrances, and there weren't any good decision points until after the first couple of rooms in either case. Not only does it limit things for the players, it limits things for the DM as well - I was thinking too linearly about how I was going to place obstacles. Fixing that got me over a mental block and pushed me to be a bit more creative in setting stuff up.
of adding just a little vision and personality<
ReplyDeleteGreat DM advice for almost any situation.
I didn't always have more than a couple ways into/out of a level - one from the above level and one to the lower level (my dungeons were never gigantic, like these modern Megas). But I did like to have multiple corridor routes around the level.Also, I almost always have another tunnel, shaft, or loooooong set of stairs that lead straight down beyond the dungeon and into the deeper Underdark regions. This gave a good back-up reason for wandering encounters to be coming and going in the dungeon, and where replacement monsters came from.
>randomness in dungeon creation or generally in the use of tables gives the DM the feeling he is playing too<
When the DM guide first came out, I used the hell out of the random dungeon stuff. Haven't really done it for around 20 years, but now you guys have me thinking of getting some practice in. With my Friday night tonight being kind of light, maybe I'll crack open sixer, set up some figs and a hex map, and get a little practice in.