A dungeon too big?! [Archive] - Wizards Community

A dungeon too big?! [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Dryder
01-14-04, 11:01 PM How do you keep big dungeons from getting boring and at the same time keep them interesting?

I have the problem, that each time I run a dungeon which is quite big, I think my players get bored. After a time it's nothing more then:

"... with an exit in the north and west wall."
"... and you see three doors in this corridor."
"... exatly opposite of the entrance to this room, you see three archways, leading away into darkness."

and so on...
In the past, I started to break every dungeon down to not more then 10 rooms. This way, my players keep on it, and it's even easier for them to map it.
How do you do it, and did you experinece the same problem?
DrakeRunner
01-15-04, 12:09 AM If you use cookie cutter dungeons, I suppose.

You need to spruce it up more, thats how you keep things interesting.

"... with an exit in the north and west wall."
"... and you see three doors in this corridor."
"... exatly opposite of the entrance to this room, you see three archways, leading away into darkness."

Becomes

"...two tunnels run to the north and west, a foul dank smell flowing toward you from both"
"your flickering torchlight reveals a trio of recesses in the tunnel, the light glinting off door knockers like light off a beasts's eyes"
"you enter the room, and the first thing you notice are the three archways on the far side, nothing but inky blackness beyond seeming to devour the light from your torch like a hungry wolf devours flesh"
Fixxxer
01-15-04, 02:21 AM The easiest way to break up monotony in a large dungeon is to have it made up of different materials...basically splitting it into sections. In this way, the players feel like they've completed a sort of mini-dungeon and are moving on to the next.

What I mean is that The first area is the worked stone walls of a castle. The second area is the natural tunnel walls of the cave structure beneith the castle. The next area is under water. Afterwards, they end up in a huge crystaline cavern.

See the pattern?
Carbon_Copy
01-15-04, 02:49 AM Have you ever stepped back after creating a dungeon and asked, "Why would anyone create a dungeon like that?"

I'm not talking in the sense that you are getting disgusted with what you just made and asked it rhetorically, I mean have you sat down and determined a purpose for each of the rooms in there? Excavation isn't cheap, nobody is going to tunnel off and chisel some random pointless room out of the bedrock just to make their underground complex bigger. I generally create a dungeon under the assumption that there is a rational purpose behind each room (do note, however, that disorienting intruders is often a perfectly valid reason to create a room), as well as for the layout as a whole. This doesn't necessarily apply for things like naturally occuring underground caverns, which may have long, winding stretches that lead off into nothing in particular.
Dryder
01-15-04, 03:39 AM Originally posted by Carbon_Copy
Have you ever stepped back after creating a dungeon and asked, "Why would anyone create a dungeon like that?"

actually... YES! Because I'm talking here about commercial modules!!! I presently run the

Adventure Path Series from Dungeon, and the first dungeon there is a gnome enclave, which is quite big!

When I design a dungeon, they are more like small crypts, hideouts or safeholds.

But well, this question might work, to get an idea of which areas I may delete...

Fixxxers idea is good as well. Break it up to pieces, with obvious "boundaries"!

Thanx so far!:)
Goblin-Crunch Cerial
01-15-04, 07:54 AM Man….

I don’t know if I should put in an answer…
But…

In my opinion a Dungeon can NEVER be too big. I could play with a first grader DM, his/her dungeon could be nothing more than a spiral collection of rooms filled with more and more kobolds all armed with short spears. I wouldn’t care if we played for 12 hours straight I’d still be :) happy. :)

My best experience was back in the day (I wore corduroys and eighties music played on every radio station). Our DM made this monstrosity dungeon and gave us first level newbee characters. The dungeon was 10 levels with some floors merging within others. By the time we finished we were 7th level. His formula would be tame by today’s standards being nothing more than video game logic. But damn- finding the ten colored keys was a hoot.

My Point:
Doesn’t matter how long a dungeon is, always make sure to give the players a way out if they become to bored.
Kalidor
01-15-04, 12:51 PM *wonders who here has played with "The Ruins of Undermountain" and "The Ruins of Undermountain II"

Now THERE'S a big dungeon.
Fixxxer
01-15-04, 01:00 PM Originally posted by Kalidor
*wonders who here has played with "The Ruins of Undermountain" and "The Ruins of Undermountain II"

Now THERE'S a big dungeon.

Wizardry V all the way, yo!

Have you noticed that in most commercial adventures, there is no bathroom in the dungeons? Sure, they take time to point out that there's refuse and filth on the floors... which one might expect from orcs or kobolds, but there's not privy, chamberpot, garderobe, etc...even though a small conclave of human wizards lives down there as well. Interesting, no?
PSchirf
01-15-04, 01:09 PM Dungeons are too big when the other players start to ask the "Why did anyone build this?" question.

But why use dungeons at all? Outdoor settings are just as easy to design, once you get the hang of it. A goblin village on a maze of small islands of dry ground in the swamp can be just as fun to assault.
D+1
01-15-04, 01:29 PM Rephrased from a post I made to r.g.f.d. It references RttToEE somewhat specifically but it's relevant to the original post:
My personal theory is that ALL 3E modules are too long. RttToEE is an example of the worst of them. It is not a module - it is a campaign setting masquerading as a module. Even "normal" length modules have not taken into consideration the shift in paradigm that came with 3E. Third Edition characters advance so much faster there MUST be a change in the way modules get presented or you end up with long, boring dungeons or instantly high-level characters because you sqeeze so many fights into a short period of gaming.

If a module has 70 rooms/encounters then if their difficulty balances out as it should (not too many underpowered or overpowered) your characters are going to advance 5 levels - 1/4 of a 20-level career. Four such modules and you either go to Epic Level campaigning or start new characters or a new campaign. We did it that way in 2E because we HAD to. You needed a solid diet of combat and treasure in order to get enough xp to EVER level up. 3E is just not like that anymore. If anything it's actually swung a little too far to the other extreme - it takes too few encounters to level up.

That doesn't even get into the sheer time or repetitiveness involved in plodding through all those combats. You really gotta have a freak on for rolling dice to wade through something like RttToEE from start to finish. How many rooms or encounters do YOU normally go through each session? No matter how you slice it, a "dungeon" like this is truly deserving of being labled a "crawl". It's certainly long, and by the time you've waded through 140 encounters and are still only halfway through it (by my count there are well over 400 encounters/areas, including 230 just for the heart of it - the mines) the pointlessness of it all will have manifested. "Eradicate the Temple" is not going to be a motivation that will carry most players through session after mind-numbing session of slaughterfest in the same freaking dungeon.

The solution for 3E is that modules - ALL MODULES - need to be broken up into much smaller bite-size chunks. They should create "threads" of activity that you can have characters pursue over several levels and much longer pieces of game-time. A dungeon would be only a dozen or so rooms but the adventure might feature several such dungeons that are connected by common threads such as a recurrent NPC nemesis, obtaining one more parts of the broken magic dingus, revealing one more clues in a mystery or simply being the next in an obvious chain of locations. By creating such divisions you can weave several module threads at once and your campaign is rewarded with a variety of activity without having to spend 4, 6, 18 (?) sessions slogging through one, long, tedious dungeon. The individual dungeons or module parts also become much easier to create when you don't have to populate the Halls of Undermountain again, only to have the PC's agonizingly depopulate it.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Dryder 01-14-04, 11:01 PM	How do you keep big dungeons from getting boring and at the same time keep them interesting? I have the problem, that each time I run a dungeon which is quite big, I think my players get bored. After a time it's nothing more then: "... with an exit in the north and west wall." "... and you see three doors in this corridor." "... exatly opposite of the entrance to this room, you see three archways, leading away into darkness." and so on... In the past, I started to break every dungeon down to not more then 10 rooms. This way, my players keep on it, and it's even easier for them to map it. How do you do it, and did you experinece the same problem?
DrakeRunner 01-15-04, 12:09 AM	If you use cookie cutter dungeons, I suppose. You need to spruce it up more, thats how you keep things interesting. "... with an exit in the north and west wall." "... and you see three doors in this corridor." "... exatly opposite of the entrance to this room, you see three archways, leading away into darkness." Becomes "...two tunnels run to the north and west, a foul dank smell flowing toward you from both" "your flickering torchlight reveals a trio of recesses in the tunnel, the light glinting off door knockers like light off a beasts's eyes" "you enter the room, and the first thing you notice are the three archways on the far side, nothing but inky blackness beyond seeming to devour the light from your torch like a hungry wolf devours flesh"
Fixxxer 01-15-04, 02:21 AM	The easiest way to break up monotony in a large dungeon is to have it made up of different materials...basically splitting it into sections. In this way, the players feel like they've completed a sort of mini-dungeon and are moving on to the next. What I mean is that The first area is the worked stone walls of a castle. The second area is the natural tunnel walls of the cave structure beneith the castle. The next area is under water. Afterwards, they end up in a huge crystaline cavern. See the pattern?
Carbon_Copy 01-15-04, 02:49 AM	Have you ever stepped back after creating a dungeon and asked, "Why would anyone create a dungeon like that?" I'm not talking in the sense that you are getting disgusted with what you just made and asked it rhetorically, I mean have you sat down and determined a purpose for each of the rooms in there? Excavation isn't cheap, nobody is going to tunnel off and chisel some random pointless room out of the bedrock just to make their underground complex bigger. I generally create a dungeon under the assumption that there is a rational purpose behind each room (do note, however, that disorienting intruders is often a perfectly valid reason to create a room), as well as for the layout as a whole. This doesn't necessarily apply for things like naturally occuring underground caverns, which may have long, winding stretches that lead off into nothing in particular.
Dryder 01-15-04, 03:39 AM	Originally posted by Carbon_Copy Have you ever stepped back after creating a dungeon and asked, "Why would anyone create a dungeon like that?" actually... YES! Because I'm talking here about commercial modules!!! I presently run the Adventure Path Series from Dungeon, and the first dungeon there is a gnome enclave, which is quite big! When I design a dungeon, they are more like small crypts, hideouts or safeholds. But well, this question might work, to get an idea of which areas I may delete... Fixxxers idea is good as well. Break it up to pieces, with obvious "boundaries"! Thanx so far!:)
Goblin-Crunch Cerial 01-15-04, 07:54 AM	Man…. I don’t know if I should put in an answer… But… In my opinion a Dungeon can NEVER be too big. I could play with a first grader DM, his/her dungeon could be nothing more than a spiral collection of rooms filled with more and more kobolds all armed with short spears. I wouldn’t care if we played for 12 hours straight I’d still be :) happy. :) My best experience was back in the day (I wore corduroys and eighties music played on every radio station). Our DM made this monstrosity dungeon and gave us first level newbee characters. The dungeon was 10 levels with some floors merging within others. By the time we finished we were 7th level. His formula would be tame by today’s standards being nothing more than video game logic. But damn- finding the ten colored keys was a hoot. My Point: Doesn’t matter how long a dungeon is, always make sure to give the players a way out if they become to bored.
Kalidor 01-15-04, 12:51 PM	*wonders who here has played with "The Ruins of Undermountain" and "The Ruins of Undermountain II" Now THERE'S a big dungeon.
Fixxxer 01-15-04, 01:00 PM	Originally posted by Kalidor *wonders who here has played with "The Ruins of Undermountain" and "The Ruins of Undermountain II" Now THERE'S a big dungeon. Wizardry V all the way, yo! Have you noticed that in most commercial adventures, there is no bathroom in the dungeons? Sure, they take time to point out that there's refuse and filth on the floors... which one might expect from orcs or kobolds, but there's not privy, chamberpot, garderobe, etc...even though a small conclave of human wizards lives down there as well. Interesting, no?
PSchirf 01-15-04, 01:09 PM	Dungeons are too big when the other players start to ask the "Why did anyone build this?" question. But why use dungeons at all? Outdoor settings are just as easy to design, once you get the hang of it. A goblin village on a maze of small islands of dry ground in the swamp can be just as fun to assault.
D+1 01-15-04, 01:29 PM	Rephrased from a post I made to r.g.f.d. It references RttToEE somewhat specifically but it's relevant to the original post: My personal theory is that ALL 3E modules are too long. RttToEE is an example of the worst of them. It is not a module - it is a campaign setting masquerading as a module. Even "normal" length modules have not taken into consideration the shift in paradigm that came with 3E. Third Edition characters advance so much faster there MUST be a change in the way modules get presented or you end up with long, boring dungeons or instantly high-level characters because you sqeeze so many fights into a short period of gaming. If a module has 70 rooms/encounters then if their difficulty balances out as it should (not too many underpowered or overpowered) your characters are going to advance 5 levels - 1/4 of a 20-level career. Four such modules and you either go to Epic Level campaigning or start new characters or a new campaign. We did it that way in 2E because we HAD to. You needed a solid diet of combat and treasure in order to get enough xp to EVER level up. 3E is just not like that anymore. If anything it's actually swung a little too far to the other extreme - it takes too few encounters to level up. That doesn't even get into the sheer time or repetitiveness involved in plodding through all those combats. You really gotta have a freak on for rolling dice to wade through something like RttToEE from start to finish. How many rooms or encounters do YOU normally go through each session? No matter how you slice it, a "dungeon" like this is truly deserving of being labled a "crawl". It's certainly long, and by the time you've waded through 140 encounters and are still only halfway through it (by my count there are well over 400 encounters/areas, including 230 just for the heart of it - the mines) the pointlessness of it all will have manifested. "Eradicate the Temple" is not going to be a motivation that will carry most players through session after mind-numbing session of slaughterfest in the same freaking dungeon. The solution for 3E is that modules - ALL MODULES - need to be broken up into much smaller bite-size chunks. They should create "threads" of activity that you can have characters pursue over several levels and much longer pieces of game-time. A dungeon would be only a dozen or so rooms but the adventure might feature several such dungeons that are connected by common threads such as a recurrent NPC nemesis, obtaining one more parts of the broken magic dingus, revealing one more clues in a mystery or simply being the next in an obvious chain of locations. By creating such divisions you can weave several module threads at once and your campaign is rewarded with a variety of activity without having to spend 4, 6, 18 (?) sessions slogging through one, long, tedious dungeon. The individual dungeons or module parts also become much easier to create when you don't have to populate the Halls of Undermountain again, only to have the PC's agonizingly depopulate it.