D&D General (+) What Should Go in a D&D Book About Dungeons?

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I'll throw my vote for more usable traps. To me, a trap is only interesting if it's sprung, and the effects aren't resolved instantly. Hallway dart traps may as well just be the DM randomly ticking off your hit points so we can get to the fun stuff. Not Grimtooth's crap either, which is basically petty tyrant of the 5th grade lunch table nonsense that punishes players for doing anything sensible or daring to interact with the world. Include specific hints gained from both player and character skill. I'm not a trap expert and neither are most DM's, so the likelihood of a DM and player both being knowledgeable about the subject to convey useful info and act on it are low.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Except they don't take the ubiquity of D&D's magic into account. I'm not even talking spells (but also that), but also magical/supernatural flora, fauna and phenomena. Write it for a non-dirt farmer world, rather than pointless minutia about how much rope frays against various surfaces.

Well, then let's add that in. Again, the Dungeon Delver's Guide covers this stuff extremely well.

 

[Bedrockgames]

A section using Jennell Jaquays designs as models for making dungeons.

A new Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb guide might be a cool approach. They could just hire Jennell Jaquays to write the DMG, provided she is available. I think the name recognition alone, plus the fact that people from a wide variety of styles have been influenced by her.

 

[Reynard]

This thread really got the gears turning, and since I have some time and no freelance writing on deck...

It's gonna get weird. Stay tuned.

 

[Fifinjir]

Guidelines on tailoring dungeons to their role in the campaign. Is the campaign in a single dungeon? Does it frequently switch between overworld and dungeons? Or is dungeon delving meant for the climaxes of campaign arcs? All of these have different considerations and will need different design to make them shine.

 

[Lanefan]

Ideas? (And this is a '+' thread because if you want to pooh-pooh the idea of 'bringing back dungeons' the other thread is a fine place for such cynicism.)

My off-the-top-of-my-head ideas:

• A system for keeping track of time, with rules and suggestions for how to use that to add pressure
• Other ideas for keeping the tension and pressure up (without counting torches)
  • E.g. Rests: ways to make rests something players are less eager to take (ties into the time thing)
• Rules for mapping, backtracking, and getting lost (i.e., if you want to map carefully, it consumes more time!)
• Traps!
  • I really don't like WotC's take on traps; I would want @iserith...or The Angry DM...to write this chapter
  • I imagine this chapter containing both guidance on how to design and DM traps that aren't just empty dice rolls, and also a whole trove of fleshed out traps based on that guidance
• Puzzles! (Similar to traps)
  • This wouldn't necessarily have to be the sorts of puzzles designed by evil geniuses (who apparently have phobias about good old fashioned keys); it could just refer to anything the party has to figure out. "There's a rope bridge spanning the chasm, but the ropes look rotted and most of the planks are missing..."
• Secret Doors! (Similar to traps)
• Random tables for fleshing out dungeons.
  • Not (necessarily) to generate a whole dungeon, but for when you are just filling in details or looking for inspiration)
• A whole chapter on light and darkness, full of juicy guidance on how to use both to terrify your players most effectively
• New monsters?
• New subclasses? (Honestly not my favorite)
• Links to a playlist of thematic music
• General guidance on how to design and run dungeons
  • Issues of realism (why are the monsters here? what do they eat? etc.) and whether your players will actually care

This is a brilliant list!

My only quibble with it would be the bit I bolded, in that resource management would need at least a mention if not a deeper dive. Food and water in particular, along with consumable light sources.

Things I'd add to the list:
--- in the light-and-darkness piece, a section on night vision and its effectiveness (or lack thereof)
--- a brief primer on different types of light sources and their effectiveness (torches, lanterns, various light-emitting spells, etc.)
--- a reminder that dungeons can be 3D environments; a section on verticality and how to incorporate/use it effectively
--- in the "how to design" piece, a note that any constructed dungeon was originally built for a purpose, even if that purpose has long since become irrelevant, and that the design should reflect that original purpose
--- a section specifically devoted to "natural" dungeons or cavern complexes (as opposed to the constructed ones with nice neat 10'-wide hallways), including what might grow/live there, natural hazards e.g. trapped gases, etc.

 

[Clint_L]

I actually try to take the "crawl" out of dungeon crawl by making sure to add a ticking clock to these types of environments. For me, the dungeon is not a place where you routinely go camping; you only go into it for compelling reasons, and it should be a race against steadily dwindling resources (not torches, but hit points and spells). A short rest feels like a difficult decision, and a long rest out of the question in most of my dungeon adventures. And often the point is not to defeat a Big Bad but to avert some catastrophe and escape intact.

So I guess my immediate recommendation is, as the DM, to make sure that your story has real stakes multiplied by an impending sense of disaster. Real stakes where if the party is too late, they are too late and there are consequences. The dungeon is the one place where I design with that 6-8 encounters/adventuring day in mind.

Note: This would not apply to a dungeon that is in effect a wilderness a world unto itself, like the Underdark.

 

[Bill Zebub]

This is a brilliant list!

My only quibble with it would be the bit I bolded, in that resource management would need at least a mention if not a deeper dive. Food and water in particular, along with consumable light sources.

Yeah I should have written "not necessarily counting torches". I know management of supplies is considered, by some, a necessary component of true dungeon delving, and it may be necessary to full replicate the original D&D experience, but I don't think it's necessary to provide tension and suspense.

@Manbearcat said, I think in the other thread, that "load out" was a requisite or important component. I get the sentiment, but I don't think the level of granularity that requires specifying how many iron spikes and how much chalk dust and a million other things is needed. I kind of like the system in Five Torches Deep, in which you specify how many "load" units of various categories you are bringing, without having to specify each individual item.

I've toyed around with designing some rules where you just specify what weight/encumbrance of additional supplies you are bringing, and the higher the number the higher the probability that you have any one particular item, that also factors in how rare/unusual the item is (as determined by the DM). You are more likely to have a bit of rope than you are to have a sausage grinder, but the guy who brought 50 pounds of supplies is twice as likely to have either as the guy who brought 25 pounds of supplies.

Things I'd add to the list:
--- in the light-and-darkness piece, a section on night vision and its effectiveness (or lack thereof)
--- a brief primer on different types of light sources and their effectiveness (torches, lanterns, various light-emitting spells, etc.)
--- a reminder that dungeons can be 3D environments; a section on verticality and how to incorporate/use it effectively
--- in the "how to design" piece, a note that any constructed dungeon was originally built for a purpose, even if that purpose has long since become irrelevant, and that the design should reflect that original purpose

Maybe with a whole list of ideas about dungeons that were built for purpose A but is now being used for purpose B, and how some features might have been repurposed.

--- a section specifically devoted to "natural" dungeons or cavern complexes (as opposed to the constructed ones with nice neat 10'-wide hallways), including what might grow/live there, natural hazards e.g. trapped gases, etc.

Yes. Maybe in addition to Traps, Puzzles, and Secret Doors there's a section on Hazards. Really I'd be thrilled with just an encyclopedia of those things (one volume per category!)

 

[Bill Zebub]

I actually try to take the "crawl" out of dungeon crawl by making sure to add a ticking clock to these types of environments. For me, the dungeon is not a place where you routinely go camping; you only go into it for compelling reasons, and it should be a race against steadily dwindling resources (not torches, but hit points and spells). A short rest feels like a difficult decision, and a long rest out of the question in most of my dungeon adventures. And often the point is not to defeat a Big Bad but to avert some catastrophe and escape intact.

So I guess my immediate recommendation is, as the DM, to make sure that your story has real stakes multiplied by an impending sense of disaster. Real stakes where if the party is too late, they are too late and there are consequences. The dungeon is the one place where I design with that 6-8 encounters/adventuring day in mind.

Note: This would not apply to a dungeon that is in effect a wilderness a world unto itself, like the Underdark.

Yes. As I suggested up thread, a ticking clock can add tension similar to...but maybe even better than...torch counting.

 

[jgsugden]

Chapter 1: What are Dungeons?
Chapter 2: How to weave a dungeon into a good storyline.
Chapter 3: Dungeons that make sense - how to make your dungeon seem realistic instead of just a series of random rooms.
Chapter 4: Traps and Features - Ideas on ways to make different areas of a dungeon interesting
Chapter 5: Dungeon Access - How to allow PCs to access the deeper parts of the dungeon without walking through it over and over and over and over ...
Chapter 6: Dungeon Ecology - How to populate your dungeon in a way that explains how creatures survive there.
Chapter 7: Dungeroneering Spells and Magic Items
Chapter 8: Henchmen - hiring NPCs to support your dungeon exploration
Chapter 9: Sample dungeon - An abandoned Dwarven Settlement with surface and subterranean areas. The PCs will find gates to the Feywild, the Shadowfell (a Raveloft domain) and the Ethereal Plane - all of which feature alternative versions of the location that need to be explored to solve the mystery of the place. The Shadowfell Ravenloft Domain constantly relives the fall of the Settlement providing historical clues, the Feywild features beings that have taken much of the older artifacts of the place, and the Ethereal houses many threats that are trying to make their way back to the Prime Material Plane again - all overlapping the original monster filled dungeon.