How do you actually stock a dungeon? I have a floor all mapped out, but I'm at a loss as to how to fill it with stuff. Is it really just arbitrarily deciding there's a trap in x hallway or that y room will have kobolds and treasure in it?
It's like I'm staring into eternity
>>47788474
Not actually the map I'm using. I'm going old school, graph and notebook paper, pencil, and a binder.
>>47788428
So I have a good rule of thumb that I read in some book can't recall the title but it had OSR style drawings and it was great for dungeoncrawl advice.
1/3 of the rooms have monsters, 1/3 have traps or a non monster encounter, 1/3 are empty
Of the rooms with monsters, 1/3 of them have treasure. Then for each empty room there is at least one wandering monster in the dungeon.
Also don't forget not all treasure is gold and silver, sometimes it can just be a nice empty barrel that will hold things well or some mundane gear or odd fascinations like a monocle or a fancy carving of a bird.
>>47788428
What is the dungeon's function?
A prison will have different loot/traps/wandering monsters than a cave used by bandits, or a poacher's retreat, etc.
Figure out what function your dungeon serves within the setting and go from there. If a bandit hideout, what would you as a bandit lord do with the layout?
>>47788428
this is not a dungeon, this is a maze.
A dungeon serves a purpose
It's not just a random smattering of oddly-placed monsters and traps with a big shiny chest at the end. When you first make it, you need to ask what the original purpose for it and who was using it for what.
If there's creatures living in it, how are they alive? Where do they get water from? How does the ecosystem sustain itself? If there's larger predator creatures, what are they eating? Is there enough prey creatures to sustain them?
Not every room is going to have a thing living in it, either, depending on its purpose. Sometimes you just find an empty dining hall, or an old bathroom. Pantries, armories, cells if it's an actual prison dungeon. If there's a bunch of kobolds living in one room, but it's the third subbasement and you need the magic red key to open up the floor above them, how the fuck did they get down there and what the fuck are they eating?
>>47789274
>>47789466
What about the Mythic Underworld style of dungeon design?
>>47789466
It depends on your game. Sometimes a Dungeon can just be. Doesn't need a purpose, just a theme
>>47788546
I once had a completely furnished noble dining room in a dungeon with a giant landscape painting on the far side of the room. They took everything including the silverware and candle sticks.
One of my favorite loot sites and made my player's aware there is more loot than just gold and silver.
>>47789852
If that fits in the overall world, then I guess that works
I like realistic, sensible dungeons. They help make the world feel more real and aids immersion, but if you and the players want some OLD SCHOOL HIGH FANTASY GOODNESS, then batshit mythic underworld design works great
Honestly, I'd like to populate my next campaign with mostly realistic purposeful dungeons and one megadungeon near the end. If they're used to shit that makes sense by then, the megadungeon will seem all the crazier in comparison.
>>47789956
As a player that's the shit I love. Guilt free kleptomania. It's fun just sorting through a bunch of stuff and selling it to whoever's buying
>>47789972
Well I mean if you want realism then stop using dungeons because nobody is going to make a fucking underground labyrinth and fill it with treasure. If they do its like one of a handful in the entire world.
>>47788428
donjon.bin.sh
>>47788428
For trap and monster placement, I try to think from the perspective of whoever's building the dungeon. You want a safe means for authorized inhabitants of the dungeon to get wherever they want to go, but still have traps that are likely to catch intruders. You also don't want the means of bypassing the trap to be too inconvenient for the dungeon's inhabitants. For that reason I most often place traps in passages that lead to dead ends, traps that trigger only when a lock is picked or a door broken down off its hinges, or traps that you'd only ever encounter if you were sneaking around rather than walking around. Monsters will be hanging out near where the food and water are if they're not alerted to danger and guarding the entrances if they are.
As for treasure placement, I make a bunch of slips of paper with magic items written on them, put them in a box, and then have players draw from the box randomly whenever they find magic treasure.
>>47790154
Dungeons in the strictest sense of the word, then sure.
There a plenty of underground tombs, sewer networks, catacombs, bunkers. Dungeon has become a catch all term for "man made" underground structure.
>>47790120
It's also great to see IF the players can get the treasure out of the dungeon. Not everything must be small or light.
For example, a giant barrel filled with very old excellent wine but no suitable container can be found nearby.
http://pastebin.com/8w78c4bS
There's the generated monsters and loot and shit for that dungeon if you guys want it.
I've been wanting to run a tesseract dungeon but have no idea what would be in it
>>47788428
imagine exploring that dungeon...
looks awesome.
>>47791487
More tesseracts
>>47791986
>you walk through a door and enter a rectangular room. Theres another door on your left.
>you walk through that door into...another rectangular room..roughly the same size...there's a door on your right.
>you walk through that door into yet another, roughly the same sized, recrangular room...theres a door...
>>47791487
Stuff from the 1997 movie "Cube".
>>47788546
>1/3 of the rooms have monsters, 1/3 have traps or a non monster encounter, 1/3 are empty
I think this is actually straight from OD&D. Regardless, it's an excellent rule of thumb.
>>47794522
Well, if you want to be boring about it, sure, it'll be fucking boring.
>>47788428
It depends on what the "dungeon" is. Normally, I like to lay things out as if it serves or once served a function. Where would the baddos be hanging out? Is this their dwelling, or did they recently ransack the place? Would they place traps in their wake in hopes of capturing nosy adventurers? Where would these being keep their treasures? Where would well-equipped, less fortunate adventurers die, leaving both a warning, and their equipment for the betterment of the party?
>>47788428
>Is it really just arbitrarily deciding there's a trap in x hallway or that y room will have kobolds and treasure in it?
Yea, pretty much. There's no science to it if that's what you're asking. That said, a good dungeon design benefits from thinking about story.
It can be a part of the greater story of your world, first off. Maybe people have been disappearing, and your dungeon has a big bone pile in it somewhere. Merchants along a trade road being robbed, and your dungeon is just a small horde of bandits guarding bolts of fine cloth and crates of fine porcelain in a store room towards the back. Maybe the government is unstable, and so this dungeon is an underground resistance cell with lot of traps but few desperate, poorly equipped defenders, with partial plans of a greater plot on one of their bodies being the only treasure of note.
Whatever your dungeon is, tie it into the rest of your world some way, some how. That will start to give you ideas of how you might want to stock it. And you're world building and dungeon building at the same time. Saves time you know.
>>47788428
Depends on how much you like/dislike your players and what they want. If they are just murderhobos, then there's no real reason to try and make an organized dungeon. If they actually want to plan out how to approach the problem and solve it, a variety of paths and a mix of obstacles is quite entertaining.
I blatantly stole the 5-room dungeon design and made it Warhammer 40k grimdark themed and it was very well received.
>>47795161
Next, think about the story the dungeon itself will become. Think about the party, telling the story later, of how they entered the dungeon, dealt with this trap, then that monster, then got lost over here, teleported over there, ran the moment the medusa turned the rogue into stone towards the bathing nymphs pond when they fell into the crumbling earth as the enslaved umber hulks of the grand army of Lloth finally breached these caves in search of ...
A story. A dungeon should be a story. It doesn't have to be a grand, epic story, but it should have some kind of beginning, buildup with some setbacks, and eventual climax. They can be traps, puzzles, combat encounters, even just some drama, but think of your dungeon as being a story that your party someday might tell someone else over a beer.
Then, yea. Trap here, kobolds there, treasure over there. However the fuck you want, doesn't matter. Happy gaming.
>>47788428
Here you go boss
>>47788428
>How do you actually stock a dungeon?
By determining a number of key things before drawing out the floor plan.
>I have a floor all mapped out, but I'm at a loss as to how to fill it with stuff.
Ah, nevermind.
>Is it really just arbitrarily deciding there's a trap in x hallway or that y room will have kobolds and treasure in it?
Well, yeah, might as well, now.
Random thoughtless dungeons can be fun too, sometimes.
How did you design the floor?
Did you do it arbitrarily?
A turn here, a room there, a secret door there, until you were finished?
Do the same with whoever built or is using the dungeon and decide how they'd defend it.
If you want to put thought into it, we had a Dungeon creation thread up last week.
I planned on starting it again tomorrow night.
If this thread is still up, I might do it here.
>>47795847
You're a real cunt
I kinda want to make a dungeon that's as unnavigable as possible. No 4+D stuff, but making full use of three dimensions, not aligning the floorplan to a grid, one-way passages, parts that shift around or change, the whole dungeon rotates slowly so the direction of gravity changes. That sort of thing. And of course, it should be fuckhuge.
>>47796195
Do it! And don't forget the flooded chambers.
>>47788428
I want your pic as a playmat.
No I need it.
Check out five-room dungeon design. It works fine with more than five rooms, it just gives a handy break down of pacing, challenges, narrative and design.
The One Page Dungeon contest has some really neat ideas and inspiration for how to make thematically consistent and well put together hellhole in a limited space.
>>47791487
Other explorers.
Some are same sentient races like them, but were driven mad.
Some are evil parties.
Others are creatures from other planes randomly wandering in and being trapped.
>>47796181
Yeah, that came out more snarky than I intended.
Sorry for being a snarky cunt.
>>47796315
which also change position, as gravity shifts
>>47791487
Fucked up spatial (and maybe temporal) anomalies:
- A region of inverted space fixed in the center of the room that grows larger and smaller as you approach and retreat from it respectively, looks like a soap bubble. Anything passing through is turned inside out.
- Desiccated skeletal remains, the belongings of the dead rendered decayed wreckage by the passage of time. Some of it looks oddly familiar (insert sword-hilt with a family crest, etc.)
- Gravity well in the center of the room, strength is equal to proximity. It might move around.
- Room with a single corner mirrored four times over. This means four duplicate versions of the party will enter simultaneously and copy their actions at a 90 degree rotation.
>>47788428
I improvise the whole thing, including room layout and content
>>47788428
Go and read these:
Maze of the Blue Medusa
Deep Carbon Observatory
The Darkness Beneath series from Fight On! Magazine
Tomb of the Bull King
The One Who Watches From Below
S3 - Expedition to the Barrier Peaks
and learn how they do it. Or steal. Some of the best work ever produced for rpgs in these pages.
>>47800442
>determine a number of key things before drawing
Well?
>>47794551
I think you're thinking of the 2002 sequel, Cube 2: Hypercube.
>>47791487
(I was just about to start a thread about tesseract dungeons before I saw this)
Remember that just as the 1D lines that make up the sides a square surround a 2D space, and the 2D squares that make up the sides of a cube are surrounding a 3D space, the 8 3D cubes of a tesseract are surrounding a 4D space.
Every time we discuss tesseract dungeons, all the attention goes to figuring out how the 8 cubes fit together, how characters would travel between the cubes, and whether gravity is uniform or relative, and ignore the most interesting thing about a tesseract- the 4D part.
Consider what these anons are saying >>47789466 >>47790222. Who created the dungeon, and why? Creating a 4D object (which would in all likelihood not be on the material plane) would doubtlessly be a large effort for 3 dimensional beings (why else would it possible for 3 dimensional characters to traverse it?). Too much effort to be just for show, (especially if they're 3d, and thus couldn't even see the entire thing). What if the tesseract is hollow? Consider the possibility
that it was constructed to surround something that exists in four dimensions, as some sort of prison or cage.
(continued)
>>47804888
Well, a number of Anons already mentioned a few:
>>47789274
>What is the dungeon's function?
>>47789466
>If there's creatures living in it, how are they alive? Where do they get water from? How does the ecosystem sustain itself? If there's larger predator creatures, what are they eating? Is there enough prey creatures to sustain them?
>>47794796
>Where would the baddos be hanging out? Is this their dwelling, or did they recently ransack the place? Would they place traps in their wake in hopes of capturing nosy adventurers? Where would these being keep their treasures? Where would well-equipped, less fortunate adventurers die, leaving both a warning, and their equipment for the betterment of the party?
>>47795161
>Whatever your dungeon is, tie it into the rest of your world some way, some how.
>>47795300
>A dungeon should be a story. It doesn't have to be a grand, epic story, but it should have some kind of beginning, buildup with some setbacks, and eventual climax.
But first, you need to know what kind of experience going through the dungeon is going to be.
Is it a slow, suspensful delving into a den of horror to kill a terrifying monster?
Is it a frantic, time-sensitive search and rescue?
Is it a glorious battle against a hoard of evil sentients?
Is it a slow and methodical expedition into a dangerous treasure trove?
Hopefully, you can see how each of these scenario lend themselves to different approaches to dungeon design.
For one, if you want a madcap race through tunnels, you want noise traps and clusters of enemies, not lethal traps and puzzle doors.
>>47788428
Wasn't there a bigger one than this? It had more rooms and a stonking great-black spot that the builders had patently avoided, but that's about all I remember.
>>47802525
Ignore this. Being a shape that exists in 4 spatial dimensions has nothing to with bizarre anomalies. a variation of the third point, where gravity points to the center, is an exception. This is a totally valid, and perhaps most realistic, method of using gravity in the dungeon (gravity points toward the center of the tesseract, and the center of a cube is the closest distance). That said, the following is designed with the more common variation, where down is subjective, in mind (though it may still be possible to use the above with some alteration)
>>47806294
(continued)
Using this as the reason for it's existence, here is my proposal:
The party enters as a result of a mishap with a circle of teleportation, or some equivalent. From here there are two ways to do this, and primary objectives for the party:
1. Permanent Teleportation Circle or equivalent is on the ceiling or high up on a wall; party falls out, have to navigate the cubes so that the circle is on the floor.
2. The party exits through some kind of magitek equivalent of a Circle. After the last party member has come out, you may have the power supply run out, and task the party with finding the backup power crystals or equivalent contained elsewhere in the tesseract in order to escape, or leave it open and letting the party wander around.
Depending on where the portal was connected to, and possibly depending on whether option 1 or 2 was chosen above, it may be overgrown, and inhabited as suggested by >>47799048.
In the center of some of the cubes, the party will see a metal sphere. If the method of traveling between cubes is to have holes at the center of each face, with poles running running through them (one would get to the above cube by climbing up the vertical pole) the room would appear like pic related. If instead, there are doors on the walls to go to adjacent rooms and staircases/ladders to go up and down, taut chains will connect the sphere to the corners of the room.
(cont).
>>47808008
(cont)
you can see a glowing line or wire running down the pole/chain. whether the glow is due to divine magic, arcane magic, or something else entirely running through it is up to you. The poles/chains may also be rusting.
Whatever is under the spheres will register as evil under detect evil, etc.
messages in an ancient language on some walls will speak of a horrible monster which can move in inexplicable ways that terrorized the planes, and how the builders managed to trap imprison it. The message may go on to suggest how to re-bind it.
If option 2, some random room will have a chest with the crystals necessary, though the face the chest is on should take a while to get to.
In one cube the party will find a large strange looking device extending from the wall(s) or corners and into the center. looking at it, it seems that not all of the device is visible. Instructions on a wall (or all the walls) in the room will indicate that the device is for temporarily stunning The Monster. there should be a button or something that a character can use to activate the machine. if option 2 is being used, it may contain the type of gems needed, though not as many as needed.
In another room will be a machine or something that inscriptions say powers the enchantments keeping The Monster imprisoned. If option 2, this will also be powered by the same kind of crystals. If option 1, there will be some way to accidentally disconnect the machine.
(cont)
>>47809093
(cont)
if the power is disabled or the chains break, the spheres will momentarily shake, move back to the center of the cubes, and then fall, hollow. A shrieking sound similar to that of Giygas will reverberate from no clear directiction.
The party will promptly receive an automated telepathic message informing them that the exit has been blocked to ensure The Monster does not escape. (returning to the starting cube will confirm this to be true).
At this point, The Monster can attack by having tendrils intersect with the the cube. 'stabbing' attacks have the tip of one of the tendrils appear as a point that grows into a sphere just smaller than the metal sphere. It takes a turn to retract the tendril. while intersecting with the cube, any physical attack can pierce its 'skin'. If other beings aside from the party are in the tesseract, The Monster will attack them as well. As long as the they aren't far from each other, The Monster can attack targets in two adjacent cubes at once.
To defeat The Monster, the players must use the stunning machine, reattach the metal spheres to the limp tendril tips, put the spheres in place, and reactivate the power. alternatively, they can kill it, but The Monster has an absurd amount of HP. after re-binding/killing the monster, the party will be notified that the exit is no longer blocked.
