Designing Dungeons Part 2

Or, Designing More Dungeons

As with the first part of this article, we’re talking about dungeons. I’m currently designing one right now and focusing on the philosophy of how to make them great.

Why Dungeons?

Dungeons are the ur-setting of RPG adventures. Obviously, they came first, arising from Dave Arneson’s Castle Blackmoor and later, Gary Gygax’s Castle Greyhawk. I already covered how dungeons make the PCs’ choices more manageable for both the players and their GM. But dungeons aren’t realistic, some will say. Now, the classic dungeon arises from a fantasy milieu, but I will only look slightly askance at someone throwing around concepts like realism in a world where wizards cast spells and dragons breathe fire. That’s not the real counter to the “not realistic” thinking. Instead, I’ll grant that the dungeon isn’t realistic, and that’s great. It’s nothing in the real world. It’s an alien environment. Its that otherworldly nature of the whole thing that makes it so intriguing.

Just like how we don’t get fun from our rules because they’re realistic (sword wounds tend to kill from infection days after the fight as often, if not more often, than dramatically on the battlefield), the environment that gives a clarion call to magic-wielding, bigger-than-life adventurers is one filled with unknown dangers and mysterious mystical wonders.

And dammit, dungeons are fun.

Encounters and Challenges

It’s useful to know the game system the group will be using to play in the dungeon. There are two reasons for this.

1. The designer has to know the capabilities of the characters, at least generally. Now, to be clear, I don’t think you should design specifically to their abilities. Giving players challenges they can’t overcome by using something written on their character sheet encourages player creativity and ingenuity. And it’s more fun. (There’s that word again.) Challenges should be a mix of situations where the characters can use their abilities to succeed and those they must overcome using an idea that they come up with in the moment.

If we’re going to really drill down on this, success from creativity shouldn’t be required to progress in the dungeon. Player ingenuity might lead them to rotate the statue so that it faces the mirror, revealing a secret passage, but there should be another way for them to keep progressing as well, either by exploring, making a lock picking check on the locked door, or carefully scooting along the narrow ledge. In this example, though, I’d encourage you to make the secret passage an easier or more rewarding path. And I’d further encourage you to make it fairly obvious that it’s better. The players won’t be sad to learn that using their senses and their imaginations is better than relying on game mechanics, and the GM won’t be sad that the players will start to pay more attention to the descriptions they’re given. That isn’t to say that every challenge should have both a mechanical and a creative solution, but honestly, there would be nothing wrong if they did.

Lastly, I’d say that sometimes there doesn’t need to be a solution. If there’s a magical gateway inside a block of transparent crystal that leads right to a treasure room, the designer doesn’t need to provide a way to get through it. Rather, give them a conventional (longer, and more arduous) way to get to the treasure room. If they can figure out a way to break the crystal block without destroying the gateway, well, good on them.

Or—and I’m really pitching near-sacrilege here—don’t provide the conventional way. Let it tantalize and aggravate the players. Then, when they discover a magical artifact or whatever months later in the campaign that will solve that problem, I almost guarantee that they will remember the block of crystal with the gateway in it, and they’ll go back.

2. The designer needs to be able to pace the dungeon adventure. When we’re talking about exploring the Dungeon (note the capital D), there’s almost certainly more adventure than a typical group will finish in a single session. Knowing how many sessions a group might be in the Dungeon is valuable. Will the characters leave when they need to rest? How will the number of encounters in a typical session match up with how many the characters can tackle before they’ll need to rest? (In a perfect world, those numbers will be identical every time, but we do not live nor game in a perfect world, and there will always be variability.)

And if they’re having a lot of encounters, the characters might advance and become more capable at some point. That point, however, varies based on game system. But a good designer can judge that amount of advancement within a margin of error. If there are six sections/levels/regions to the dungeon and they’ll start the first one as a beginning character, it’s good to know how skilled or powerful they’re likely to be when they reach the sixth one, for example.

Embedding Story

Telling a dungeon story isn’t like writing a novel. It’s not even like designing an event-based RPG adventure. It’s its own thing. You design a bunch of interesting challenges and encounters, but the real gift you give to the GM are the stories you embed into the dungeon. Note that I say stories, plural, and that I use the term “embedding stories” rather than “telling stories.” I’ve said it before in my columns here, but I’ll say it again: the designer isn’t the storyteller. The group around the table tells the story, working together creatively. To put it another way, the designer isn’t writing a script, or even directing the action, they are creating some side characters (with agendas of their own) and laying out some props and scenery. The director and the main actors—the GM and the players—are doing all the rest.

So the designer layers in story threads that the players might pick up on and the GM can run with, or—just as importantly—threads they can ignore, miss, or even reject outright. The designer doesn’t know what motivates or interests the players, nor should they. Place treasures for those motivated by wealth, wonders for those fascinated by weirdness, mysteries for those who love to solve them, and so on.

Part of a dungeon’s story, of course, is why it exists in the first place. Natural caverns are self-explanatory, but if it was built, who built it, and for what purpose? My personal favorite dungeon backstory is for it to have been built for some original purpose by one group, but is now used by another for a different purpose, like the catacombs under Paris initially built as tunnels for quarrying purposes, then used to store the dead, then used by resistance fighters in WWII to hide, and later used by artists and musicians (sometimes illegally).

So in a dungeon’s design, a portion of an old mine could be expanded and used by an old religion for their temple which was later abandoned and occupied by some horrible monster like a dragon. The adventure might involve the characters confronting the dragon in its underground lair, but the descriptions of the place will involve all kinds of crumbling religious iconography. And the whole place has mine shafts extending away from it, perhaps to some other location that has been repurposed for something else.

Which suggests that a single dungeon can have multiple purposes at the same time and—more importantly—multiple types of occupants. A monster lairs in one bit, but some humans use another part as a defensible fortress. And then there’s ghosts haunting another part from some past tragedy, or maybe there’s a cemetery above on the surface (or an ossuary below).

Factions in the dungeon—the different organized or semi-organized groups of inhabitants of the place—can certainly help turn a bunch of underground rooms into an engaging story. They can help add verisimilitude to the whole thing as well, and make everything seem dynamic. If there are trolls in one area, they might come to help the trolls in another area if they’re under attack. If the cultists know their subterranean temple is at risk, they might develop patrols to watch for an attack. These are dynamic situations, and they suggest the beginning threads of a story that might emerge as the characters interact with them. Do the trolls like helping each other, or are they actually vying for supremacy? Do the cultists resent being put on patrol rather than performing their normal religious duties, or are they bloodthirsty and love getting a chance to confront their enemies with their wickedly curved daggers?

Further, do the cultists and the trolls work together because they worship the same chthonian gods? Do they conduct trade? Or do they hate each other and attack on sight based on something that happened before the characters even came to the dungeon?

This isn’t just flavor or background. These are things the players can discover and use, inserting themselves into the story by infiltrating, bribing, or allying with one faction, pitting the factions against each other, or anything else their devious little player minds can conceive.

The Boss at the End

I’d just like to point out that the concept of a “boss monster” originates from video games, not tabletop games. We’ve just adopted that mentality for so long that it feels like ours. What I mean by that is not that early tabletop dungeons didn’t sometimes have someone in charge, if it was a dungeon with an organization of the inhabitants, like in the Moathouse of the Village of Hommlet. Rather, what I mean is that the concept of “if we beat the boss monster it means the adventure is completed” wasn’t a thing in those days. You might defeat Lareth the Beautiful in the Moathouse, but there was still adventure to be had. In fact, in a well-run Moathouse, Lareth might very well come find you before you come find him. When I ran that adventure [mumble mumble] years ago, I’m pretty sure good old Lareth saw his final defeat near the entrance to the dungeon level, after he and his best guards had attacked the PCs repeatedly throughout the dungeon, driving them back or vice versa.

And of course, part of what I’m getting at is that not every dungeon even has a “boss.” If the goal of the adventure is to explore the dangerous ruins to find the magic scepter, obtaining that scepter is likely the signal that the adventure is over. There might be a monster there, but it doesn’t have to be the boss, or even the most powerful monster in the dungeon. The philosophy of the boss monster suggests that exiting the dungeon and getting back home is just denouement. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

And—again, I’m spewing sacrilege here—maybe the dungeon endpoint doesn’t need to be a fight at all. There are lots of different kinds of challenges, and the absence of a final combat doesn’t need to be an anticlimax. Although some players might see it that way because of video games.

Next time, one last entry about dungeons. We’ll take a look at maps, the best way to present information, and how dungeons can be more than just a hack-and-slash fest.