Digging Better Dungeons – Rashundai Games

Digging Better Dungeons – (Un)Broken Environmental Puzzles

Estimated reading time: 14 minutes

This post is part of a series analyzing several aspects of one of the recognizable parts of the TTRPGs we all love – the dungeons. The articles can be read in any order and they will be cross-linked when necessary. Throughout the series (and elsewhere) I use “dungeon” as a technical term and it can be used to describe any clearly defined environment containing multiple non-random encounters. These include natural caves, mines, keeps and castles, crypts, temples, ships and other vehicles, and many others.

When the party skips your puzzle

You prepared a situation where the party has to get across a chasm, or out of a deep pit. There are several solutions using the environment, character abilities and skills, or the items they found earlier. A classic environmental puzzle.

You forgot the party gained a level, and the wizard now has the Fly spell. They’re handed a coil of rope and sent upwards, where they tie it to a conveniently protruding protrusion. The rest of the party climbs up and you’ve just lost a chunk of content.

Of course they did nothing wrong, they used a tool at their disposal the correct way. That should be rewarded, if anything. Though perhaps next time you can anticipate the use of magic and create the puzzle or situation in a way that prevents such easy solutions.

An environmental puzzle from Silo, season 2. The kind most parties above level 1 would clear in a second. All rights reserved to Apple TV and/or other respective owners.

“Bypass” spells

Magic is a staple in fantasy, and we usually wouldn’t want it any other way. It opens up a myriad of possibilities, from wielding terrifying destructive powers, to reshaping the environment. There are however times when magic narrows down the course of a narrative. Depending on the workings of magic in the setting there might be codified spells, or more “freeform” casting, and both have their distinct effects.

The type of magic used in D&D, often called Vancian, uses spells with a defined set of parameters. When you cast an offensive spell, you know the range, area of effect, damage amount and type. You usually can’t use it for much else. Perhaps set something on fire with a fire spell. This kind of magic has firm rules, so you can account for its use and plan accordingly.

The other way of using magic is what we can call “freeform” magic. There are no codified spells wit set parameters. Instead you describe what you want to achieve, and use the corresponding school, circle, or whatever your powers are classified by. The DM (or in this case anything other than a DM) decides whether it’s within the character’s power, and after your roll announces the result. It’s not as easy to plan the encounters and puzzles with this in mind. Player creativity is sometimes boundless, and this is the case where it definitely should be rewarded.

Since we’re mainly dealing with systems using Vancian magic on this site, I will continue in this way. So, spells it is. Which spells cause the most trouble? Well of course the ones that enable you to move in unnatural ways. Some are available quite early and don’t do that much of a difference. You even want them used. Others, while received at higher levels, make quite a mess of your environmental puzzles. Let’s have a breakdown of the culprits.

Jump

The 1st level transmutation spell Jump is a great utility spell. It is available early and the effect can be used multiple times for a minute. A character with a strength score of 10 could do a 30 feet running jump, or 15 feet standing jump. That’s a lot. A ranger with above average strength could clear a lot of chasms quite easily.

Spider Climb

Channel your friend’s inner Spider Man with this handy 2nd level spell. Or a spider horror, as they might look to onlookers while they somehow climb walls without using their hands. Presumably they sprout some spider limbs that do the climbing. Whatever the case, the spell lets a character get to a lot of otherwise inaccessible places, and it lasts up to an hour. Plenty of time to do what needs to be done, and you can cast it on someone other than yourself.

Levitate

Another 2nd level spell, Levitate has loads of uses. You can float a creature or an object up to 60 feet from yourself. That should cover a lot of gaps and height differences. The levitated creature is rather helpless and depends on the caster for movement, unless it can pull or push itself against something. For a 2nd level spell it offers a lot, though.

Misty Step

The first available teleportation spell, Misty Step enables the caster to move 30 feet to a place they can see. You can get much more out of Spider Climb, Jump, or Levitate, if the conditions are favourable and you have time. But if time is running out, a Misty Step across a hazard might save your neck.

Rope Trick

Another 2nd level spell that could help in certain situations. As long as you have a rope up to 60 feet long, you can hang it upright in thin air. It’s held by an extradimensional pocket that you can hide in. You can also just use it to climb where needed and jump off the rope.

Fly

One of the 3rd level spells casters are waiting for, Fly opens many doors. A real game changer when it comes to mobility, this spell can wreck your environmental puzzles in numerous ways. At higher levels you can affect additional creatures, possibly making it better than Dimension Door (see below).

Gaseous Form

Not only Fly becomes available when you get to 3rd level spells. Gaseous Form gives you wings as well, but also makes you, well, gaseous. Good for escaping and squeezing through small openings. To interact with the world you have to end the spell, however. Unlike others in this list that you can benefit from multiple times.

Water Walk

Water Walk is more specific in its utility than Fly or Spider Climb. The name suggests water, but you can cross any liquid while under the effects of this spell. And it can target up to ten creatures. That large pool of acid? The party can get across with safe feet. Quicksand? Lava? Deep snow? They can walk over all of it, though each poses its own hazards other than drowning.

Dimension Door

We’re getting to the big league spells with this 4th level conjuration spell. A proper teleport with a range of 500 feet. The range isn’t that great outdoors, but should be enough for your indoor needs. You can take one other creature with you and both of you can carry your full capacity. An excellent utility spell, though you have to be a 7th level full caster to get it.

Far Step

In Xanathar’s Guide to Everything we can find what’s essentially a continuous Misty Step. You can blink 60 feet each turn for up to 1 minute or while you retain concentration. The blink is a bonus action, so you can cover a lot of ground while also performing another action on each stop. The total distance is shorter than Dimension Door and your friends have to wait while you’re blinking around, but it’s still a neat spell.

Passwall

Passwall is a 5th level wizard exclusive spell that creates a tunnel up to 20 feet long in a wall. The description specifies wood, plaster, or stone, but one could argue the possibility of its use on other materials. With this your don’t have to worry about locked doors, or any doors when you think about it. Any wall with thickness under 20 feet can be bypassed by this spell. At 9th caster level you would expect this kind of stuff, though.

Arcane Gate

We’re arriving into high magic territory. Arcane Gate essentially creates two portals similar to those from the Portal game. They should conserve the direction and velocity of a creature or object entering them. The difference is that you can’t stick the portals to a surface. They float in the air above aground, and you can rotate them as a bonus action. With this many environmental puzzles cease to be puzzles, but since it’s a 6th level spell, it is to be expected.

Wind Walk

Another spell that already has a toned down version in Gaseous Form, this 6th level transformation is the ultimate escape and traveling aid for parties. The caster can affect up to ten other creatures. All of them benefit from the effects of the Gaseous Form with a flying speed of 300 feet. Anyone affected can revert to normal state and back for the whole duration of the spell, 8 hours. The transformation takes one minute, but it’s a very small price to pay for the utility it brings.

Countermeasures

Your goal as a DM is for everyone to have fun (including you). You manage this by creating and running an engaging adventure. The outcomes of various actions are not guaranteed, and failure should always be an option, though not necessarily fatal. Each character has a set of tools at their disposal, guided by their player’s skill and creativity.

This creativity should be supported and rewarded. Sometimes the tools at disposal block creativity, leading to situations and encounters being solved too easily. That’s where you have to be creative, and use the tools *you* as the DM have at your disposal. Some are better, some are worse. The order in which you find them below is roughly worst to best.

DM Fiat

By far the worst possible option. I’m mentioning it here as a warning, as this will not lead to fun or positive feedback from your players. In short, when a player finds a bypass you didn’t account for, you deny its use. The player wants to cast a spell and you flatly state they can’t use it now. Never do this, and instead try anything other from this list.

Environmental restraints

By environmental restraints I mean conditions that prevent the use of a bypass that are not DM fiat and might make sense. Still they are rather cheap and obviously are there only to block a particular tool. A good example is some sort of magical field, or technological device, that disables magic. You could cast Fly, but that crystal on the other side of the pit cancels your spells. In some settings too much technological devices could do the same to a caster. Or there’s a small turret that zaps everyone trying to cast a spell, not doing much damage, but interrupting the spell.

It is fine when this is foreshadowed. If the party is trying to rob a vault secured against all magic, it makes sense they should only rely on their non-magical prowess. In a regular dungeon where magic is okay everywhere *but* the one place it would be really handy? I’d say it’s badly designed.

Spell caveats

The bypass spells offer great utility in what they’re intended for. They are not complex solutions, and sometimes need other arrangements. These might be as simple as a piece of equipment (rope, pitons, bucket, sled), or another spell. That brings us to resource management, when casters have to think twice before wasting a spell when another solution was possible (see below).

Water Walk enables to walk on the surface of the liquid, but does not protect from other effects it might possess. The PHB mentions heat from lava, but acid vapours are also bad for your health. There might be things living in the liquid you’re trying to walk over, and some might be hungry.

Spider Climb needs walls. What if there are none that can be reached? Or the walls might also be dangerous. Covered in toxic mushrooms or territorial vermin, or crumbling when crawled over, sending the unlucky adventurers to the pits below.

Resource management

Probably in any game, not only those with Vancian magic, there are limits to magic use. Whether it’s daily uses, spell points, stamina, or blood, you can’t have your every action be spellcasting. Most casters probably have to think how they spend their magic, same as any other resource. Depending on other factors, such as party composition, the caster might have to split their magic uses between offensive, defensive, and utility.

You can work with this knowledge to create dilemmas, decisions that have to be made either beforehand (memorizing spells), or at the moment (other forms). At higher levels many foes can have resistances and immunities to normal attacks. Spells might be needed to defeat them. Enemies or the environment might on the other hand present dangers that have to be countered by magic. Or there are simply multiple environmental puzzles, so at least some need to be solved without magic.

Puzzle design

This is what I believe to be the grail you should strive to reach when designing environmental puzzles. Or anything, really. Let’s say there’s an obstacle the party has to overcome. Don’t set it up that simply getting through with one character is enough, not even the whole party. It needs to be *solved*, and that might mean a lot of different things. Perhaps you need to move some NPCs or animals across as well. They won’t climb 60 feet of dangling rope, or agree to be changed into mist. You need to make a safe path.

Or perhaps there’s a large object that’s needed somewhere across the pit, maybe two rooms further. It’s too large and heavy to carry on back, fit inside a portal, and it can’t be changed into mist or given spider legs. You need to make way for the huge boulder, or portable generator. You might be able to bypass the next puzzle with a spell again, but now that’s two spell slots that could have been used differently. It is all connected, and each solution might affect the next puzzle.

This can be taken a bit further making multiple environmental puzzles part of one large puzzle. The diverted flow of an underground river fills a pool that raises a platform, upon which the fallen column for another puzzle can be rolled. The new flow also powers an elevator that goes not only up, where you could fly or climb, but also down. The way down was concealed by the elevator platform. Descending the elevator shaft might prove to be a shortcut, or a bonus area with clues, lore, a helpful NPC, or just extra loot.

It is a lot more work, creating a complex environmental puzzle where the pieces are interconnected. And the players might find yet another way to bypass the situations you so meticulously prepared. Keep in mind that even if it doesn’t work out the way you intended you still have your notes. It was probably a good exercise, and you can publish it! Or take some parts out, mix and match with other stuff, and use in a different campaign.

Conclusion

Magic is an essential part of fantasy, yet it can make your prepared content “skippable” too easily. There are several ways to keep environmental puzzles relevant and interesting even on mid party levels. Try designing your puzzles with magic and its limitations in mind. That way you can offer puzzles that have to be solved with brains instead of spellcasting rolls.

The guidelines presented in the article are by no means exhaustive, and I would love to read your thoughts in the comments! It’s also up to you as the DM to know your players and arrange things accordingly. Some players will never appreciate environmental puzzles, and would prefer to skip them with a spell. That’s fine, but since you’re reading this, either you, your players, or both parties like to solve an environmental puzzle at least from time to time.

Digging Better Dungeons – Palimpsest Dungeon

What is a Palimpsest Dungeon, why make one, and what can it offer? How to make one, even? All this and more can be found in this article.

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

This post is part of a series analysing several aspects of one of the recognizable parts of the TTRPGs we all love – the dungeons. The posts can be read in any order and they will be cross-linked when necessary. Throughout the series (and also elsewhere) “dungeon” is used as a technical term and can be used to describe any clearly defined environment containing multiple non-random encounters. These include natural caves, mines, keeps and castles, crypts, temples, ships and other vehicles, and many others.

This part will be about a concept that lends depth, complexity, and also integrity to your dungeon designs. What is a Palimpsest Dungeon, why make one, and what can it offer? How to make one, even? All this and more can be found below.

Palimpsest

One idea I strongly encourage is “palimpsest dungeon”. This paraphrase of the “palimpsest landscape” concept from historical geography or landscape archaeology seems perfect for creating interesting multi-layered dungeons that make sense. A “palimpsest” is a manuscript that had it’s original writing removed by scraping or washing and then overwritten with new text. Remains of the original text can be sometimes deciphered either by eye or by using modern recovery methods.

In landscape archaeology landscapes are viewed as results of successive actions by humans that have shaped the land. These activities include agriculture, construction, warfare, funerary and religious practices, and resource exploitation. Sometimes the old is removed, sometimes reused in a different way. This may be conscious and deliberate, or accidental.

A good example of palimpsest landscape would be a great barrow, where a warlord’s remains are interred. Rites are conducted on the site for a few generations. A thousand years later the warlord is long forgotten, and the local ruling class starts burying their dead around the barrow. Though of a different religion, they raise a shrine on top of the barrow and observe their own traditions there. After a generation the land is conquered and the conquerors strive to replace the religion present in the region. They remove the shrine and build their own on top of the barrow. After some events it becomes a site of pilgrimage, and a small temple complex is built surrounding the barrow. During construction some of the graves are unearthed and removed, but those untouched by foundation ditches remain. Eventually the site becomes abandoned, its purpose forgotten. New settlers come into the region and a small hamlet sprouts around the windmill built on a convenient mound.

Researchers “read” the landscape from the present backwards. Same as would a visiting party if they arrived in the hamlet described above. You on the other hand have to go from the beginning, setting the layers upon each other as you would a layer cake. With parts of layers missing, pockets of different stuff, and strange combinations. While you better not serve a cake like that to your birthday guests, your party should find it much more intriguing than a 20-centimeter high corpus of sponge.

Palimpsest dungeon

The same principle can (and should) be applied to dungeons. The “typical dungeon”, a complex of underground rooms and corridors, usually isn’t encountered in its original state. The mines were abandoned and overrun with monsters, goblinoids conquered the dwarven city, the once peaceful crypt has been taken over by a necromancer, etc. The layer encountered by the PCs is at least the second one, if not third or fourth. Even in a functioning dwarven underground city there might be parts that lay on top of older layers – old mine tunnels reused as fungus plantations, in turn overrun by mushroom-loving lizardmen.

Having more layers gives you depth on one hand, enabling more complex backstories, but also more options regarding the exploration of the dungeon. Old unused passages might offer shortcuts if found, burrowing monsters might create connections where there were none. Ancient temple underneath a crypt/monster lair/mine is an often used trope. And it makes sense.

Places are often settlet or used for a reason (no surprise there). That reason often stays valid for centuries, whether it’s military importance, environmental features, logistics, or anything cultural. On the surface, when we’re talking landscape, it’s obvious – hills, natural harbours, fertile fields, all these make sure a location will be settled again and again. With dungeons it’s similar. Natural caves will have their climate and water systems that make some areas more hospitable than others. Artificial dungeons were dug out and built with a specific purpose in mind, and this can be seen also by later inhabitants, even if used differently. Prison cells are effectively bedrooms, just not very comfortable. With some work a prison block can be used for living, especially if the beings living there are not too picky.

You might have already guessed that by creating all these layers you are in effect creating a series of dungeons with a common framework, but different contents. Not only it’s a fun exercise, you can also use these in different campaigns or with different groups.

Before you start making a palimpsest dungeon you probably have a few layers in your mind, possibly the latest one and the first one, or the most significant one. For a castle ruin it would be the present ruined state and the most interesting phase of its occupation, though there might be many different phases you want to take into account. Next you want to ask yourself questions such as “What happened between this and this?” or “How did it come to this?”, “What preceded this?”. During this process you might come up with further events leading to more layers.

Or not, not every dungeon needs to be multi-layered. Some dungeons in the sense of this article series aren’t meant to be palimpsests. You could treat a spaceship, or even a seafaring ship as a dungeon, and it would probably have just a single layer. Unless we’re discussing some kind of generation ship, or the Ship of Theseus. A tomb that’s been sealed since the burial also needn’t have more layers. It could be untouched by robbers, monsters, or anything else. The important thing to keep in mind is, as always, logic and consistency.

Keeping track

When designing a palimpsest dungeon it’s easy to lose yourself in all the layers. Especially in more complex and expansive dungeons it wouldn’t do to just note somewhere what the two or three layers are – you might have tens of layers, some only present in one room, others common for the entire dungeon.

One way of keeping track is by labeling layers with a numerical code and making diagrams when necessary. You can find inspiration in the Harris matrix archaeologists use when describing contexts. Do you need to? Absolutely not, particularly not when you’re just preparing a one-shot dungeon for the Friday session with your friends. You might consider using stuff like this if you’re going to publish the dungeon, or if the dungeon is going to appear more than once in different scenarios.

a schematic showing different layers of a multi-layer "palimpsest dungeon" — Dungeon matrix for the Muddy Frog Camp, a dwarven mining and trading settlement.

Above is the matrix for a functioning dwarven settlement. Read from the bottom it shows the history of the site in chronological order. From top to bottom the order in which the party might uncover the past is shown. A more detailed overview will have its own article. Right now I can see that when creating the mine section of Muddy Frog Camp, I can use different layers from its past to flesh it out and create interesting encounters and environs. Traces of human mining activities, monster and animal bones, remains of animal enclosures. Creating the matrix (and past of the site) didn’t take that much time, but you can probably see the benefits already. The layers do not represent fixed time periods, one might span five centuries while another merely a few years. Some might also be invisible in the record, for example the mushroom farm or pond in our example, while others might leave a lasting and very clearly distinguished. The more permanent built-up areas such as the temple or goblin fortress are an example of lasting marks.

It is also possible to create a room by room matrix, and depending on the size of your dungeon, it might be a really extensive task. Again, if you’re going to publish your work, or reuse the dungeon in different phases of the campaign or different campaigns, it might be worth the time and effort. Otherwise the dungeon matrix above should be more than enough to help you create and keep track of your dungeon.

Conclusion

Palimpsest dungeon is a concept based on palimpsest landscape. Both describe the results of different consecutive periods of activity in an area, that build upon and sometimes replace the past activities. This creates a multi-layered environment that has depth, consistency, and a logical structure. The layers might be easily readable or only faintly detectable, both cases being useful for creating history and narrative.

To help with keeping track a “dungeon matrix” is proposed – essentially a diagram showing the layers of the palimpsest dungeon and its key characteristics. It is also possible to make a more detailed room-scaled matrix, but in many cases this leads to diminishing returns, as the amount of time and effort required would be inadequate to the benefits.

The terms “dungeon palimpsest” and “dungeon matrix” will be used on this site in future posts, so I hope you paid attention and that the explanations were sufficient. A post dedicated to the model Muddy Frog Camp is on the way, in which I will try to provide a more detailed overview of the whole process of planning, designing, and recording of the dungeon. Hopefully you found this article stimulating, I will be glad for any comments here in the comment section, or wherever you saw this shared. As always, thank you for reading, and if you liked the article, please share it on your social media!

Digging Better Dungeons – Size matters

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

This post is part of a series analyzing several aspects of one of the recognizable parts of the TTRPGs we all love – the dungeons. The posts can be read in any order and they will be cross-linked when necessary. Throughout the series (and also elsewhere) “dungeon” is used as a technical term and can be used to describe any clearly defined environment containing multiple non-random encounters. These include natural caves, mines, keeps and castles, crypts, temples, ships and other vehicles, and many others.

This part will be about dungeon size. Why does it matter, what should it be based on, and what other aspects of gameplay should be based on it. And of course I will mention megadungeons as well.

The Crypt of a Church with Two Men Sleeping by Hendrick van Steenwijck the Younger.

Dungeon scale

How large should a dungeon be? Obviously that should correspond with the needs of your story and plot, but let’s say you have that figured already. Then the size depends on the dungeon – a small local monastery will be different from a regional centre of an order, as will an emperor’s tomb differ from that of a struggling merchant. Some places should be smaller than people expect, while others are often imagined too simplistically.

Often used as dungeons are various underground settlements, whether it’s a dwarven delve, or a goblinoid den. The space required would depend on the social structure of the inhabitants, and the range and scope of activities present. Though it is by no means a rule, more (economically) complex societies usually take up more space. In less complex societies there might be little to no distinction between communal areas, food preparation areas, work areas, and sleeping quarters. Your primitive goblins might occupy a couple of natural caves with only one of them different from the others, taken by their leader. In contrast a dwarven delve would have many separate sections with different purposes, and you probably wouldn’t find a craftsman preparing food in the same room he works in. Even a workshop could have multiple rooms or even levels, and of course housing could range from Spartan-style cubicles to lavish many-roomed residences. Fifty goblins might take up three to four caves, while fifty dwarves might use three to four rooms per unit just as housing (family or individual). Best keep that in mind when designing settlements.

What about tombs? It really depends on their purpose, among other things. When a tomb serves only to inter the remains of a deceased person, you don’t need a lot of rooms – maybe one burial chamber and some room(s) for burial goods, even though these can take up a lot of space in some cases. It is different if the tomb is a place where rituals are still performed – the number of rooms can grow if you have to accomodate the living as well as the dead. Below is a map of the Valley of Kings, where you can see the plans of each tomb. A more detailed interactive version can be found on this great site.

Map of the Valley of Kings with miniature tomb plans — Map of the Valley of Kings in Egypt with miniature tomb plans. All rights reserved to Journey to Egypt and/or other respective owners.

With this we get to temples and shrines. Again a temple needn’t consist of a great number of rooms. A main room (think nave in churches, or naos in Ancient Greek temples) is quite enough for many forms of worship. Often some additional rooms such as a shrine or sacristy will be present. If the temple is part of a monastery, the room count will be significantly higher – a monastery for 15 monks can easily have around 70 rooms, including spaces like gardens.

Plan of a Carthusian monastery — Plan of the Lapis Refugii Carthusian monastery in Slovakia. For the descriptions and lots of other information visit the site. All rights reserved to Kláštorisko, c.a. and/or other respective owners.

Room categories

Let’s say you make a dungeon with 20 rooms and only three are vital to the quest, and maybe another five you can imagine as optional. In a very simplified treasure hunt the three would be the key room, the guard room and the treasure room. You have to get the key, then defeat the guard and then take the treasure. Along the way you would find optional rewards or encounters. But there should be more rooms than those, simply because that’s how it would be. In a castle there would be living quarters, kitchens, dining rooms, bathrooms, armories, storerooms, music rooms, libraries and studies, workshops, and a whole lot more that needn’t be part of the quest. But they of course could be. An enemy from an important room might flee to an originally unimportant one, but now the bathroom has purpose as well. More rooms also means more potential for exploration, which some players might find more interesting than encounters.

It surely is a lot of work and it might seem like a waste of time if you don’t even plan on the party visiting the extra rooms. But like in the #Dungeon23 and #Dungeon24 challenges, rooms don’t have to be described with twenty sentences each. Simple “pantry” or “servant bedroom, empty” will do, and you can always come up with something should the need arise. If the room wasn’t important in the first place, you needn’t make it too much detailed all of a sudden. Random charts and generators could help, but they make things, unexpectedly, random. So not for everyone and every setting.

When preparing a dungeon it is wise to note which rooms will be essential (main quest), which will be optional (side quests or bonus loot, lore, etc.), and which rooms are there because it makes sense, but they don’t have much to do with your adventure.

Room effectivity

Sometimes five well-crafted rooms offer more than three dozen dull ones. The amount of time the party spends on one room will of course vary. We can call this “room effectivity”. The important thing is to focus on productive time, i.e. time spent progressing with the plot, learning about the world, obtaining gear or resources. Not all combat encounters are productive, although they certainly can increase the time spent in a room.

Non-combat encounters increase room effectivity nicely. A prisoner in a cell, or a hermit angling for blind fish in an underground lake might offer clues, sidequests, or at least a nice change of pace from exploration. They can be revisited to fulfill some errand received (getting keys for the prisoner). Or the NPC encountered might have answers to something found further in the dungeon. The hermit might know a lot about his surroundings, even if he keeps to the lake. He might even know about another way into the underground city, now that the main tunnel is blocked.

Puzzles also count. We can divide them into two main groups – environmental puzzles, and designed puzzles. I will dedicate another article to puzzles entirely, so here I will just say that by designed puzzles you can understand various mechanisms that have to be overcome for something to happen – these often don’t make sense in a dungeon. The environmental variety is created by circumstances and environment. When the drawbridge is broken the party needs to find another way across the chasm, perhaps using stuff found around. Both varieties increase room effectivity and therefore the time spent in the dungeon.

One of the worst puzzles in Atlantis: The Lost Tales by Cryo. All rights reserved to Cryo Interactive Entertainment and/or other respective owners.

Megadungeons

One of the issues I’d like to address, especially since this series of articles is based around the challenge aiming to create a megadungeon (see Dungeon 24). Megadungeon is a concept that promises sessions upon sessions of exploration and encounters. It’s one thing to create room after room, level after level, filled with whatever seems interesting at the moment, and another thing for the whole to make sense. What’s the relation between levels 2 and 10? How do they (that is, their inhabitants) interact? Why are there 12 (or 50) levels, anyway? Why is there an elven tomb sandwiched between an orc fortress and dwarven mine?

Settlements can easily give you a lot of rooms – a small community of intelligent beings can occupy hundreds of rooms. I suggested earlier that structures with lots of similar rooms such as settlements, necropolises, or prisons, are good as a backbone for your megadungeon. Be careful not to overdo it by making the whole dungeon one large prison with hundreds of similar cells, or a large dormitory with copy-paste rooms. First of all keep in mind that even such places needn’t be completely uniform in their design, even if only thanks to time and use. Misuse, decay, and damage can also bring variety to an otherwise repetitive spaces.

One thing that makes megadungeons believable, interesting, and less randomly put together is a concept I’m borrowing (and reverse-engineering) from landscape history researchers, such as landscape archaeologists and historical geographers. I call it “Palimpsest Dungeon” and there will be a whole article dedicated to this, so I will keep it rather short here.

UPDATE: There is now an article covering the concept of Palimpsest Dungeon, just click the link!

The core principle is that a Palimpsest Dungeon has multiple succesive layers (not levels!) that overlap. Each one can change the one(s) below in its entirety or just partially, and new qualities can emerge from the interactions of these layers. This way you can get a dungeon that is ancient, extensive, and full of things to explore without it looking like you just wanted to create a massive dungeon.

Conclusion

Regarding dungeon size first and foremost think how large it should be while still making sense. Don’t create temples that have hundreds of rooms just because you want the dungeon to last a few sessions. Either use sensible sized dungeons (whether it’s a tomb, temple, mine, whatever) and maybe make the exploration and encounter parts more complex. Use non-combate encounters and puzzles to make the dungeon last longer. Or create a Palimpsest Dungeon with multiple overlapping layers, if you absolutely need to have 18 levels and 486 rooms.

What’s your take on Dungeon Size? Do you prefer sensible dungeons, or just want lots of rooms to explore and defile? Are you perhaps one of those rare characters who strive to create expansive dungeons that make sense? Leave a comment and share with your friends!

Digging Better Dungeons – How to Behave

Does the party have to clear the whole dungeon every time? Does it always make sense? Are there different approaches? Let’s see in this part of the Dungeons series.

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

This post is part of a series analysing several aspects of one of the most recognizable parts of the TTRPGs we all love – the dungeons. The posts can be read in any order and they will be cross-linked when necessary. Throughout the series (and also elsewhere) “dungeon” is used as a technical term and can be used to describe any clearly defined environment containing multiple non-random encounters. These include natural caves, mines, keeps and castles, crypts, temples, ships and other vehicles, and many others.

In this part I would like to look at the PCs’ behaviour during their stay in a dungeon. Not necessarily about vandalism or littering, though these can also play a part in what I’m talking about.

The archetypal “dungeon crawl” consists of the party entering a complex of rooms and systematically (or not) clearing one after another, often with combat and puzzle encounters waiting in most of the rooms. While this is what many players expect and many gamemasters deliver, it often does not make sense. In the cases it makes sense for the dungeon, other parts of the plot are probably lacking. It makes for static dungeons that are easier to prepare and manage, but less immersive, believable and in my opinion rewarding. That’s not to say that people can’t have fun with such dungeons, but you might be looking for something more if you’re reading these lines.

To help make my point I will refer to master Tolkien and his works. They of course need no introduction and I will assume you are familiar with both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Reasons for entering

The best example I can think of is Moria. Khazad-dûm was an underground dwarven kingdom that has fallen at some point in the history and was occupied by goblins, orcs and cave-trolls. An expedition led by Balin, son of Fundin, aimed to reclaim (sic!) the halls of Moria. After some success it ultimately failed. The Fellowship then enters Khazad-dûm with an intent to get across (or under) the Misty Mountains expecting a welcome by the dwarves. After discovering their fate, the Fellowship takes flight through the deep halls and manages to leave through the East-gate of Moria.

The Mines of Moria concept art for “Lord of the Rings” (1978) by Ralph Bakshi. All rights belong to the author, who shared the painting here.

We have two different “dungeon crawls” going on with Moria. The first of these, Balin’s reclamation expedition, was probably quite a massive undertaking. Though we don’t know any numbers other than a few named characters, I believe we can safely assume there were hundreds of dwarves. The fighting was of course done by the soldiers, but many others, including craftsmen and servants had to be part of the expedition. They started reclaiming Khazad-dûm from the east and established a colony in a small part of the former kingdom that lasted five years till it succumbed to the orcs and worse. The dwarves had to proceed systematically, retaking room after room, securing entry points, building strongpoints and safe zones. Clearly that’s not something a party of four to six can manage. Unless the dungeon is static and the monsters are content with staying in their rooms until the heroes get their long rest, of course. In a dynamic dungeon this could not happen and a small party would lack the manpower to keep the cleared areas clear. Ambushes and attacks from behind would happen all the time.

The other instance is the Fellowship’s crossing of Moria, where after finding out there won’t be a welcome party the Fellowship’s goal was to simply cross to the other side. They moved fast, trying not to make their presence known, and certainly didn’t go room to room slaying monsters. And the party was rather high-level even without considering Gandalf, the only low-level members being the halflings.

I want to propose several different ways of handling dungeoneering, each with its own merits and shortcomings. They can overlap slightly, or they can change during the course of adventure. There are plenty of ways to ensure the party has to explore, even if they only need to get from A to B. But I believe there ought to be a better reason for exploration or room-by-room cleaning.

Apart from reclamation (Balin) and transit (Fellowship) we can have other reasons to enter a dungeon. The party might be after a certain foe (assassination). They might be after every single monster in the dungeon, but not care about the dungeon itself, then it’s not reclamation but rather extermination. If searching for an item let’s call it treasure hunt, regardless of whether it’s an actual treasure or for example hostages.

Let’s put those into a table with some factors that interest us:

	Explore everything	Defeat everything	Time span	Manpower needed
Transit	no	no	short	party
Assassination	no	no	medium	party
Extermination	yes	yes	medium to long	army
Treasure hunt	no	no	medium	party
Reclamation	yes	yes	long	army

Many TTRPG dungeon crawls fall into the assassination, extermination, or treasure hunt categories, or their combinations. Either way you have to crawl through the whole dungeon to finish it. It is especially true in video games, where there are often items placed in a way that you have to explore everything. I guess it makes sense from gaming perspective, but not from the dungeon design one.

Does it work elsewhere?

Apart from the already mentioned Moria from Lord of the Rings, can we get some other easily recognizable and acknowledgeable examples from media? Sure we can!

What about another legend, Star Wars: A New Hope? Did the heroes clean room after room full of stormtroopers aboard the Death Star? No, they had their objectives and went after them. In this case we would talk about a combination of treasure hunt and transit. And in the prequels, did Obi-Wan and Anakin clear out the whole flagship of General Grievous while rescuing Palpatine from Count Dooku? On the other hand, when Darth Vader captured the Tantive IV corvette carrying Princess Leia and the droids the stormtroopers had to eliminate all opposition. The same can be said of the attack on the Rebel base on Hoth. See the pattern?

I believe that should be enough to get a feeling for what I’m trying to point out, if it wasn’t clear before. Unless your goal is to clear out the whole area, you won’t do it, you just do what you came to do and get out. But since we don’t want to present players with just a string of encounters, they should be introduced to a larger dungeon than necessary. More on that in another part of this dungeon series, now I’d like to finish with party behaviour.

Do’s and don’ts

Depending on the party goals and the dungeon crawl category there are some things the players and gamemasters should keep in mind. From the player point of view time should matter – if you’re on a rescue mission, you leave looting for after the rescue, and stay on the move. They should also be conscious of their position within the dungeon and of the positions of potential foes. Of course you as a GM won’t hand them a plan with marked enemies. The party should however take mental notes of unexplored corridors, rooms, and other potential risks, especially if there’s going to be a return journey or a later return to the same dungeon (more on that in another post). Battle encounters should be avoided if possible, as even weak foes can buy time for an ambush or flanking move by others.

On the other hand, if your party is clearing out an old keep to serve as their headquarters, let them take their time. It is also necessary to be conscious of what’s happening where, but there should ideally be secured areas behind the party. And those could be contested as the occupants try to expel the invaders or break out and flee. The party would try to eliminate all opposition, although fighting is not always the best option – some monsters might rather accept eviction than death, even if highly repaid.

And what about extermination? Even when your goal is to kill or subdue all enemies you could have a better plan than just room-after-room slaughter. Stealth is always your friend and if there are leaders or enemies whose presence makes other stronger, it would be wise to target them first. There might also be means of calling reinforcements, and eliminating those is also something that should be prioritized.

Note that I have omitted exploration from my categories. Of course one can imagine a party that just ventured down some stairs to see what’s down there. But I also think in this kind of situation there is something missing – motive. It’s in the meta-gaming territory when players just go into a dungeon because the gamemaster prepared it and the PCs have no real motivation. At least have them search for valuables (treasure hunt), or menaces to surrounding lands (extermination). Or if it’s a mine or something similar, they would probably want to stake their claim to it (reclamation).

Dungeon dynamics

To conclude this article I will just outline the focus of a future post, the dynamics of a dungeon. At the beginning I mentioned static dungeons and that I found them less interesting and believable. Without devouring the upcoming article I can share that dynamic dungeons are another thing that makes room-by-room dungeon clearing unnecessary. The enemies are not going to wait until you slaughter their friends on the other side of the door; they either come to their help or fortify their positions. And that’s just one aspect of dungeon dynamics, but more in the coming article. There won’t be any sources for this one, but if you have been living in a dungeon and haven’t read either The Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, yet, you better do it fast!

As always, your thoughts and questions are welcome in the comments. Can you think of another dungeon crawl category? Is there an example from media that supports or even refutes that categorization that you would like to share?

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