>>46187563
I like dungeons that are designed like real buildings or complexes. The ones that have toilets, and not tons of rooms with no purpose. Plus it makes it easier for the GM, you just have to find the blueprints of an old temple and file the names down.

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>>46187563
My philosophy is a bit like that of the other anon. For a city or town, my philosophy is not to look at it from a player perspective (what will the players do?) but from an NPC perspective (what do the NPCs do in daily life?). Things like daily markets may be less convenient than a few magic marts, but the average peasant is more interested in fish than in scrolls.

Same for a dungeon. Before it was a dungeon it was something else. What was that something else? A ruined city? A palace? A prison? A tomb?

To me, the big difference between a city and a dungeon is whether or not there are people living in them. A neat dungeon idea, for example, is an abandoned for that was overtaken by a goblin king who restyled it as his personal residence, guards included.

>>46188077
don't you feel like after a while you're just making pleb dungeons? When everything is justified by dungeon function, it can quickly deteriorate into boring locations like washpits and eeeevill laundry hampers.A lot of locations end up mundane and predictable

Towns first and foremost need to feel alive and have character. Things that make the town stand out against other cities or towns. Maybe these people are the nicest people who you've ever met and are extremely friendly and hospitable, offering you free room and board just because you asked for the location of the inn? Maybe they have a single trade good which keeps the town alive and the entire town centers around that single trait? What are the leaders of the town like, or the military? Maybe they're completely normal? Maybe the leader runs a cult part-time under the basement of the local bar but only as a hobby? Give people unusual things about them to make unusual, like you would find in real life.

More importantly, make sure that the town moves when the characters aren't around and it isn't just a set piece that only exists when the characters want to do "town stuff". What's the name of the town? Where is it? How does the town being there change its way of life? Maybe the town is incredibly small, but has a lot of trade because it's on the coast of a trade route, and there's a huge red-light district because of this? Maybe the young people of the town flood to stock the red-light district to make money to make it out of "this hellhole"?

You don't have to go out of your way to think about things like "What are the tax rates?" or "What bylaw prevents people from trading coffee on fridays", but you should think about things like local superstition and practices. Maybe even a local religion.

Imagine that the town itself is a Player Character. How would this character keep itself alive following the rules of a normal town, and what sort of traits and flaws does it have?

>>46188311
That depends on what kind of dungeon it is. It could easily be some kind of ultra-prison created purely for the purpose of locking up some supreme evil guarded by elementals.

And even if it's an abandoned fortress, not every other room is a washpit. You still have barracks, a yard, the captain's quarters and the like. It's actually a lot less predictable than a non-descript dungeon full of non-descript rooms.

>>46188368
I like this too. The major city of my setting actually has districts that can be extremely variable. The commercial district is where the mercantile upper class lives and it's a pretty fucking sweet place. There's the temple district which is pretty much where the religious class is concentrated and it's pretty sweet too, albeit more sober than the commercial district. Most other districts are just middle class but the Western district (on the other side of the river) is an impoverished shithole.

My player (solo campaign) just bought a house in the Western district because real estate prices are incredibly low there. Soon he'll discover why.

>>46188368
On Dungeons:

Dungeons need a theme. A dungeon is a building, and buildings are usually built for a specific purpose, such as to fortify locations, to guard specific items, or even just a place to hold the day-to-day activities of a business operation. For SOME REASON, someone decided to build a dungeon, and you need to know that reason to help you flesh out the rooms inside. Much like Town design, your Dungeon needs traits and flaws like any other character.

To give an example, the last dungeon I made was a large castle/mansion out in the middle of the woods. The castle used to be a fortification occupied by a nefarious group who was at war with another group for a long while. After the war ended, the owner of the castle converted it to a training temple dedicated to the local religion, complete with training regiments for acolytes, and even using the large ballrooms for sermons and throwing "parties" for potential converts. But in secret, the owner still held true to the nefarious group and had rooms concealed away to meet with old members of the group in secret in hopes to overthrow the other group.

As such, the castle's outside had a lot of documents and puzzles pertaining to the religions doctrines, while the inside of the castle looked like an aristocrats summertime playhouse, where as the secret rooms lead to a cornicopea of military supplies, war tables, and torture rooms. All of this might sound weird, but thanks to the history of the place, the characters were able to follow along with the plot lines and rumors to figure out the chain of events of the place. What made it even more memorable for them was the fact that none of the nefarious group was left around to stop them. The place was infested with monsters and bandits. So they were able to absorb history without being forced to deal with it, in a sense.

It's important to have a goal or idea when designing a dungeon or town. Having a core idea for the place you are designing is what lets you give it character. It the dungeon is an abandoned ruined fort of some long dead empire inhabited undead it would make sense for it to be crumbling in some parts, but for the most part very sturdily built. If the dungeon is a tomb or something, then it would make sense if it is large and not that crowded, but super dark. It shouldn't really be that complex. The most important idea though is who is inhabiting the dungeon? Is it some local bandits, or a monster, pack of beasts, or undead. Figure this out and then try to make changes to the dungeon that would make sense based on how those creatures/people would change the place to be habitable.

For towns, make a flow chart. Start it with why the town was established: Was it a farming settlement that just became really popular and evolved into a town? Does it have substancial mineral wealth that it began as a mining operation? Was it built around a fort that became a regional strong hold as the empire began to weaken? Once you establish this you have a good idea of the identity of the town. From there make bubbles for different stages in how the town developed. Have a sense of how old the town is. You don't need to be super detailed but think of things that would make this place be alive. Maybe a former mayor/lord had an obsession with foreign design and so there is an exotic looking quarter of the town. And remeber, most towns and cities grow over time, so it should be a straight shot through the city from one gate to another while passing by the castle, town hall, and guild halls. Instead it should be planned out sections connected to different planned out areas. Old town around some famous old monuments should have very crowded streets.

Most of the advice in this thread has been solid.

My number one rule when designing a man-made environment is that it has to make sense. The first thing I do is decide all of the essential rooms needed for this environment to function in its intended purpose, and then I decide which rooms are more isolated or difficult to reach. The number one thing I try to avoid is rooms which serve no discernible purpose (I'll make a caveat here that a grandiose room with no practical purpose can indeed have a purpose if merely to impress visitors, but you don't want too many of these).

I prefer to make my buildings/dungeons practical because this allows my players to use their common sense when making decisions. The guard quarters probably isn't buried deep within the establishment, likewise the secret laboratory isn't the second door from the main entrance.

I prefer to make my environments tactically interesting by the placement of objects: furniture, pillars, etc. I save dramatic environmental effects like deep chasms and rivers of lava for special occasions. Even then, I prefer to have a plausible reason for why the designers or the structure decided to build in such a location.

>>46187563

I prefer to have all of the rooms in my dungeons/temples that you would find in a real building, but the layout is designed in a way that all of the important/relevant rooms are arranged in a linear path and there's something drawing the players into those particular rooms, such as a light or a noise. Side rooms will typically only provide purely optional stuff - they might have some very minor treasures/monsters, a hint for an upcoming difficult encounter, or a bit of fluff that might explain some of the setting or one of the NPC's motivations for what they're doing. Alternatively, a side room might be nothing more than a bathroom, but I try to avoid entirely pointless rooms with nothing in them.

>>46189766
but it's still just a set of encounter hurdles the party runs through without much premeditated knowledge, isn't it? How do you keep one dungeon from becoming like all the others?

>>46190276
Most of my games take place in a cyberpunk context, so I'm going to stick with what I'm comfortable with. This can be extrapolated in other genres with a little work however.

Let's say you have two missions to retrieve some valuable technology, one is from a fairly reputable corporations and one is from a very shady corporations.

The reputable corporation's location is an expansive one-story complex with a large visitor's center and several interior courtyards. The main research lab where the object of interest is located is in the middle of the complex, fairly secured but not particularly hidden. There are a few guards, mostly armed with pistols and nonlethal weapons.

The shady company's environment is a densely packed skyscraper, you know that the more secure levels are on the upper floors. You make your way to the top floor only to learn that the main research lab isn't there, but rather in a secret underground laboratory. You make your way to the basement and discover a secret elevator that takes you deep underground to a research facility guarded by automated weaponry and guards in heavy-armor with assault weaponry.

The other thing to consider is culture and aesthetic. Is this location cramped or spacious? Do they prefer absolute efficiency in organization or do they use some space for decorative purposes like fountains or statues? Do they like building out, up, or downward when the need more room? Are locations more communal and intended to be occupied by many people at once or are they more personal like private offices?

>>46190689
fair enough, I'm just wondering if this leads to less exciting encounters from a "gamey" perspective

>>46193034
I'd say no from a gaming philosophy standpoint, if only because I have one primary principle when it comes to combat in tabletop RPGs

Combat Rule 0: A fight that doesn't progress the story should be avoided if at all possible

There should not be any filler combat, if the characters are going to risk their life it should be for a consequential reason. I try to include as few fights as seems plausible given the gravity of the situation, and to offset this I make the fights as deadly as seems plausible.

Less Combat+Deadlier Combat+More Meaningful Combat

When it comes to the "gamey" perspective, the key is to think about the confines of your design from an immersion standpoint, and then figure out which "gamist" principles you can manipulate while maintaining verisimilitude.

I'll borrow Angry GM's battlefield vocabulary here:
1:Walls-Benefit outnumbered parties, a disadvantage to ranged characters except for corners
2:Chokepoints-Benefits melee and outnumbered parties
3:Obscurement-Benefits melee and allows them to approach ranged with ease
4:Cover-Similar to a wall but without providing an advantage to outnumbered groups
5:Obstacles-Prevents movement but not line of sight, benefits ranged attackers
6:Hazards-Like an obstacle, but can be traversed if one is willing to risk harm
7:Traps-An innocuous piece of terrain that changes when sprung, the best traps permanently alter the battlefield
8:Impediments-Like a hazard, but the only harm is moving slowly
9:Props-Tables, chandeliers, and other objects that can be manipulated for various effect.
10:Distance-A benefit for ranged attackers, make this interesting by providing a longer/safer route with more cover and a quicker/dangerous route with less cover.
11:Open Space-Benefits the side with more combatants and ranged combatants

>>46193342
>Combat Rule 0: A fight that doesn't progress the story should be avoided if at all possible
I completely and utterly disagree with this rule. As I believe that this is targeting wandering encounters in specific, which are actually a tool designed to encourage players to not waste time doing a trivial task over and over again and providing a punishment for task failure or bad actions taken inside of a dungeon. Such as failing to pick a lock to enter into the room might alert creatures on the other side, or it might take 10 minutes before a squadron of orcs comes marching down the hall.

It creates a tension for being in the place, which is a necessary part of the ordeal of entering into a deadly place.

Another aspect is that I believe a fight can become involved WITH the story as long as you are clever with what you include for wandering encounters. Once, I rolled up a plethora of undead creatures. All in all, it totaled about 20 skeletons and zombies altogether. The players heard them coming, and then hid. The undead marched past, and as they did, I mentioned that they had all formed a line, and many of them looked like the corpses of previous adventurers.

Even though they avoided fighting them, they hid because of the inherent danger, and afterwards began questioning what was up with them, and even though they never went looking for them, remained ever curious about them on their journey into the dungeon, even worrying what would happen if they ran into them and discussing various strategies for dealing with them.

I think trying to take out combat encounters just to make the few others more important winds up being a mistake in the end, as I find it tends to encourage a very caviler attitude towards the dungeon itself, instead of the tense atmosphere it deserves.