From: vputz@nyx.cs.du.edu (Victor Putz)
Subject: Re: Help! Tips Needed on Dungeon Construction
Organization: University of Denver, Dept. of Math & Comp. Sci.
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 92 22:45:39 GMT



Well, the first step is figuring out what all those rooms ARE.  What is
the whole dungeon?  If it's just "this place in the hills that monsters
hang out with their treasure", you're out of luck.   However, most
dungeons are made of stronger stuff!  Your players are exploring a castle,
say.  Was it a military fortess?  Wizards' lab?  Forward guard keep?

We'll take the last.  The players are exploring a guard keep that was once
an outpost on the edge of a forest, placed there to pretoect the  nearby 
settlements.  Since, however, the forest with all its miscellaneous
nasties has overgrown it and it's just a blasted shell of mortar and
stone, since all military personnel were recalled during the siege on the
capital some thirty years ago (the siege was lost and the kingdom overrun,
and no one much cared about the old keep, so it was never reclaimed).

[This is generic stuff, not the making of really epic adventures, but
something to make encounters in for a demo.  Work with me here; I'm making
this up on the fly]

Now we know what the "dungeon" is: it's a castle.  Castles have kitchens,
living quarters, privies, and the like.  Military castles probably don't
have a full dungeon (torture rack and all, but they probably have a prison
for local criminals).  A military keep will also certainly have a smithy,
training yard, watchtower (it's a sentry post), barracks for the common
troops, and of course a slightly more sumptuous suite for the captain of
the guard, one Donal Heyerdahl (Thor Heyerdahl's long-lost brother?).

Now we know what the rooms are.  How big are the corridors?  Well, what
was designed to go through them?  Lower-level corridors (and those
surrounding the barracks) probably saw a lot of traffic (ever try to rush
50 armored soldiers out a 5-foot-wide corridor?), and so were probably at
least 10' wide.  Personal corridors could be smaller, as they are very
defensible.  One person in armor and carrying even a short sword can
easily fill up 5' of corridor!

By now, layout should be done and the rooms identified by what function
they serve.  Your job is 90% over!  Now go through the rooms on a
one-by-one basis and see what they've decayed into.  We'll look (for an
example) at Donal's office.  Mostly stone, it's not a pretty place, though
there are two chairs (wooden) and a desk at which Donal spent most of his
time resting his muddy boots.  He put a log in the corner and practiced
throwing his dirk at it in his most bored moments, and had a terrible
tobacco-chewing habit, contained by his spittoon in an opposite corner. 
The desk had a crossbow mounted underneath it for easy access, and of
course his country's flag (a spare for the flagpole) was hung on the wall
to fuel Donal's already strong patriotism.  A chest in the corner
contained the funds for the keep and was regularly emptied every sevaral
weeks by the king's taxpayers.

Thiry years pass.  By the time your players find this room, they see a
desk with one chair.  The other chair is overturned, a crossbow bolt
piercing its back (the catch broke on the bow before the string gave out;
the crossbow is on the floor behind the desk, jostled out of its mounting.
 A tattered flag hangs on the wall, and a badly chipped log rests in a
corner.  In the other corner, dark stains coat the floor and walls, save
for one circle (where the spittoon sat; Donal took it with him).  The
chest is still there.

Your players, though will likely be baffled by all this.  A trapped desk
that shoots at those who come near?  The chest is probably trapped as
well, then!  And what sort of brute lived in here, that killed so many
people in that corner ("blood"stains everywhere!)  And what talisman is
this log, that he attacked it with his knife so?  etc, etc.

Believe it or not, this approach works very well.  It's even more
rewarding to DM, since your players will go through all manner of
gymnastics trying to figure out things you never imagined would bug them! 
With the addition of real traps (rather than our "fake" ones above), you
can get a lot of mileage out of a much smaller dungeon than you thought (a
simple mine with a break-in to a tomb (total of about 10-13 rooms, really)
took my players over four hours to complete, because they immersed
themselves in detail and problem-solving.

Sorry so long-winded, and sorry the example was so spartan and cheesy, but
hope you got some useful pointers out of this.  Good DMing!

-->Vputz

ps: Not meaning to put a damper on your design (because it may well be
warranted due to magical construction or a honeycomb of caves), but
assuming a medieval world setting, a fifteen level dungeon would be almost
impossible to engineer, and even worse to populate and live in.  Of
course, gihugic dungeons are great in the right place!  But perhaps
smaller, more detailed environs would suit better.  THe above keep would
be two, maybe three levels with a total of about twenty to thirty rooms,
period; add a plot and villain (keep was taken over by an orc chieftain or
liche) and this could be one, maybe two full evenings of gaming.  Ignore
if you want, of course-- it's your campaign!

Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.dnd