Dungeons Part 6: Layout Plans

Step on in this Mega dungeon project is going to be some general planning. Firstly I'm going to make a plan of the themes and content of each dungeon level, this is just going to be something rough in Ms paint to help me organise my ideas a bit.

Starting with this as my base.

Starting from the top, the Surface level will either be a smaller dungeon of itself or just a general description of the surroundings and the dungeon entrance, I'm going to leave this unplanned for now until I have a good idea of what's in the first level. Thinking about what sort of transitions from level to level and how the levels interact with one another helps tie the dungeon together as a coherent whole, my plan is to have each level have access to different resources each controlled by a different faction. The faction are weary of an all out war for fear of loosing access to a vital resource required for their survival.

After a bit of thinking I ended up with this.

So the different factions I have thought up so far are; The slavers lead by a flesh warping vivimancer, The leather skins lead by a dazzling illusionist, the pickers lead by a cruel necromancer and to round out the factions a slave rebellion lead by a scarred miner.

Though each of the faction leaders will have a lair on a different level to one another, their agents should be found on all levels in some way as well as being on each levels random encounter table. Though the factions are stuck in a cold war skirmishes and sabotage between factions should be common. Wearing the clothes  and symbols of a faction will be enough to pass by their guards and most workers, some orderlies will spot a slave or guard out of place though.

The first level of the dungeon will have a central market surrounded by other areas serving different functions.

My current mock up of the lvl 1 layout

Each of the areas shown on the mock up can be expanded to be around 2-4 rooms each, which will quickly fill out into an expansive complex. to traverse from one area to another there will be a network of corridors, aqueducts and ventilation shafts.

Most corridors and rooms in this dungeon will be unlit except for those that see frequent use, those lit will be illuminated by oil lanterns or candles produced elsewhere in the dungeon. I'm planning on having some fire beetles or oil beetles on the second level.

Let me know what you think of the plans so far, i will begin work on mapping and stocking the first level fairly soon so should have something to show by the end of the week.

M.C.

Dungeon part 5: Mega Dungeon Initial Idea.

So over the month of March, I am planning on creating a mega dungeon and writing out my design process here on this blog. This is largely what the last dungeon posts have been building towards, as I wanted to talk about the more theoretical side of dungeon making, to show what basis I am coming from when building a dungeon. I will upload the full keyed dungeon at the end of the month and I will be trying to make most of the maps on Dungeon Scrawl https://probabletrain.itch.io/dungeon-scrawl, so its pretty to look at.

I'm going to aim to do at least 3 level with 20-40 rooms per level. In terms of inspiration I wanted to do something based off the adventure The Lost City as well as the story "The Lords of Quarmall" by Frits Leiber, both of theses focuses heavily on human factions in a subterranean city and I feel is a great basis for faction play and role play.

For the system I'm going to be using Swords and Wizardry complete, and I will be levelling to around character levels 1-5. Since I am using a system that uses gold for XP, there will be a conscious effort to include more than enough gold and treasure items to appropriately level up over the Course of the dungeon.

I will be using the basic structure of the B/X dungeon stocking tables to determine the main content of a room, this table could be summarised as 1/3 Empty, 1/3 monster and 1/3 tricks or traps I like using this table because I think it gives a good spread of different types of encounters.

The starting hooks could be multiple things. Either the dungeon is a site that outside forces wish to infiltrate or the players are captured or hired by one of the internal factions. The addition of magical knowledge among the inhabitants could add to either possibility, this knowledge developed separate from the outside world may be an object of envy for a number of powerful wizards, or a means of trapping the party in the first place. Magic users also add a number of possibilities to the environment within the dungeon, illusions to hide secrets from rivals, magic traps to deter intruders and spells that improve the conditions in certain parts of the dungeon are all possibilities. It might also be an idea to group the factions based on what style of magic they prefer.

I'm probably going to write the next post in this series fairly soon and hopefully keep regular posts over the next mouth.

M.C.

Dungeons Part 4: Themes and Factions

So one of the initial stages of planning a dungeon is coming up with what the dungeon is and what monsters inhabit it, this can help inform other parts of the dungeon such as traps, layout and treasure.

The Theme of the dungeon usually starts with its original purpose, the standard options you see a lot of are tombs, temples and forts of some kind. More unusual options will stand out more and can add a lot of variety to a dungeon crawl with elements that aren't usual to the standard dungeon types.

Regardless the original purpose of the dungeon is important for creating the layout and inbuilt features of the dungeon and on top of theses features made by the original builders of the dungeon, the current inhabitants may make modifications to theses pre existing features or make brand new owns. This for example may take the form of a cannel network used to transport materials in a dwarven city that becomes the home of a band of subterranean pirate goblins or a ventilation system to supply air deeper into the dungeon that has become the nest for a pack of giant rats. Think about what creatures might be able to make tools to tunnel through stone and how they may modify the dungeon to suit them more, either in terms of space or function.  

In terms of factions, having a single faction for a small to medium dungeon works fine. But when building something larger adding in conflicting factions can make the dungeon exploration more dynamic. I think the best example of this I have seen in a dungeon is in The Lost City, in this dungeon there are 4-5 factions depending on how you look at things. There are the local mask wearing inhabitants, which contain within them three factions of priests of separate gods, and a group of hobgoblins that seem to have recently entered the dungeon based on the dead hobgoblin propping open the entrance to the city itself. Since 3-4 of these groups can be friendly or at least neutral to the party depending on multiple factors, it gives plenty of opportunity for roleplaying and a chance to form an alliance with one or more of the factions. Understanding how the different factions coexist or conflict is important to resolving character interaction.

A good way to organize both dungeon features and factions is to break the whole dungeon down into different areas(each roughly around 5-10 rooms in size), each with different common features and factions, for example a half submerged ruin may have a group of goblins living in the parts above water while some sort of fish men lair in the submerged area, the two groups may conflict over the local fish supply and other resources but would be perfectly content avoiding outright war (at least as long as there numbers are relatively equal and neither side has a clear advantage).

If your looking for a good source of inspiration for dungeon themes i would recommend checking out the Ruin tables in Worlds Without Number, these tables are available in the free version which can be found here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/348809/Worlds-Without-Number-Free-Edition?term=Worlds+Without+number

M.C.

Dungeons part 3: Dungeon generators I have used.

Dungeon Generators are a useful tool for jogging your imagination, I sometimes find it useful just to have a random room size or just to have a random room type to work with. The key to using Dungeon generators is to modify the results towards something a bit more coherent, a lot of corridors created by generators will be too long and twisting so these are defiantly something to be aware of when building dungeons. So here are some generators I have used in the past, I generally consider them to all provide the most basic part of any dungeon generator which is the room and corridor generation. 

1.5e DMG's Appendix A:Random Dungeons, This is a decent one to start with, its suited for small to medium dungeons(which i consider about 10 rooms) one thing I would caution that in the stocking section of this generator you have a 50% chance to have a monster in that room, Personally I prefer to have a 1/3 chance of monsters. This generator has some decent dungeon dressing tables though the tricks table could do with being a bit larger.

2. Table Fables 2 By Madeline Hale, This is probably the most economical option on this list and probably the simplest, for what it is I like it a lot, again this is a good option for small to medium dungeons. Its a very useful tool for just getting some room sizes and I enjoy the Notabilities & Peculiarities table (my favourite option is when the dungeon is in a farmers field and so is infested with sheep)

3.OldSkull Dungeon Generator by Kent David Kelly, This is what I've currently been fiddling around with, an expansive series of tables though it does sometimes refer back to other books in the Classic dungeon design guide series so may not be a complete product on its own, The complexity of these tables can get a bit unwieldy at time.

4.Tome of Adventure Design By Frog God Games, This is a great book for all kinds of random tables and the dungeon creation table is no difference. instead of rolling corridors for this generator you roll for layout of a Dungeon Area, number of rooms in a section and then the room sizes, the exact way things are laid out is up to you .You are guaranteed to have a Special room in every Dungeon Area, these are much larger and often unusually shaped room, in terms of size this generator works better for larger dungeons though it really depends how many Dungeon areas you string together.

I might try putting together my own dungeon tables in a later blog post I think it would be a good exercise, let me know what you think of dungeon generators or if there's any you would recommend.

Dungeons: part 2, Dungeon Inspiration and recommended reading,

Inspiration for a dungeon comes from many places and having a mix of elements inspired from different things can help make a dungeon varied. I generally like to start with what major monsters live in a dungeon when designing it so to me good dungeon inspiration and good monster inspiration are the same. For example if the monster was the original creator of the dungeon part of it might be made to benefit their species and disadvantage others, such as covers for pit traps that can bear the weight of a kobold but not a larger creature, or large vertical shafts for something like a Drow that utilises giant spiders to traverse their caverns. These features can also allow different characters to shine in their area of expertise, such as a wizards utility magic allowing for you to traverse an otherwise impossible obstacle, or a thief's ability to climb or find traps.

A lot of dungeons from fantasy fiction are great for inspiring dungeon content or themes, but usually don't detail out the layout of the dungeons too heavily for obvious reasons (it not being the most entertaining reading). Video games on the other hand allow you to explore expansive dungeons and can display a wide range of layouts. Not all of these are the best, games like Skyrim tend to have highly linier layouts, but never the less video game levels are closest in terms of design concerns to D&D dungeons. My personal recommendation is the first part of the original dark souls game, it has so many interconnected locations with varied designs and is a great example of a type of mega dungeon.

In terms of books on dungeons I would recommend the Classic Dungeon Design Guide series by Kent David Kelly. It is a rather in-depth series that runs you through the different stages of dungeon design, from developing a concept and planning the floors/sections to adding in dungeon dressing and traps from a wide range of random tables (including some d1000 tables) as well as a dungeon generator book. This series is most useful for larger dungeons especially mega dungeons, you might find some useful information for smaller dungeons. I have used this book series in the past to help design a dungeon for a west march game I was a part of, and I can say I was pretty satisfied with the results.

Amazon link:https://www.amazon.co.uk/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B004AO4O36?_encoding=UTF8&node=492564011&offset=0&pageSize=12&searchAlias=stripbooks&sort=author-sidecar-rank&page=1&langFilter=default#formatSelectorHeader

Drive thru RPG link:https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/7178/Kent-David-Kelly?term=kent+david+ke

Let me know what inspiration or tools you use I am always looking for a good dungeon generator.

M.C.

Dungeons: part 1, place in the world

Dungeons are a corner stone of early level play in many editions of D&D and OSR systems, I think that a understanding of dungeon design and techniques can benefit a DM.

Firstly dungeons are an example of location based play, not all locations are dungeons but all dungeons are locations. Part of this is a dungeon usually has a map, this helps with a lot of dungeon crawling procedures that relies on time and distance to operate smoothly. Size is a matter of needs at the end of the day, as part of a hex crawl smaller dungeons and locations can be useful as travel adjudication and decision making takes up a suitable portion of play. Common small dungeons and locations encountered in a hex crawl may be monster lairs and camps, having some maps of these ready made are a good idea before starting a hex-crawl. More moderately sized dungeons around 10-12 rooms are usually want you want for something to last a few sessions, and mega dungeons usually have infinite rooms, mega dungeons are either a site that can be returned to over and over again with other dungeons and adventures in-between or almost the entirety of the campaign.

Trying to tie the dungeon into the wider world is important for immersion and creating the feeling of a living virtual world, many module dungeons don't do this as part of the limitations of modules and there are exceptions but bare in mind that some tweaking may be beneficial expressly if the dungeon is meant to last more than one or two sessions of play and if it is meant to be a location the players go back to repeatably. One way in which a dungeon can be tied into the wider world is due to a piece of loot sometimes found in OSR system's treasure tables, treasure maps!, these are self explanatory its a set of directions or an image of a location with the promise of even more treasure, this can generate its own adventure depending how far away or how hidden/guarded the treasure is, having some sort of distinctive landmark be described or shown on a map can help the players find the treasure easier.

Next time ill talk a bit about inspiration and books I have found useful in building dungeons.

M.C.