Nine Dungeon Design Secrets

Comments · 172

• QU

  @QuestingBeast · 6 years ago · pinned

  Patrons vote on what books to review and get to watch videos first: <a href="http://bit.ly/QBPatreon">http://bit.ly/QBPatreon</a><br>Keep up with the Old-School RPG scene with the Questing Beast newsletter: <a href="http://bit.ly/Glatisant">http://bit.ly/Glatisant</a><br>Download my RPGs and adventures: <a href="https://bit.ly/QBDTRPG">https://bit.ly/QBDTRPG</a><br>My favorite RPG-related products: <a href="https://amzn.to/30kfamM">https://amzn.to/30kfamM</a>

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• PI

  @picivyvortac2641 · 3 months ago

  One of my favorite dungeon ideas (I haven&apos;t yet used it myself) is a Blue Prince style dungeon. When they go through a door they &apos;draft&apos; what the next room is going to be. They go in knowing that the dungeon is not static and that the deck of rooms is limited. So if a room that is a resting room or dungeon shop is useful to the llayers, they may wait to draft it. That way they can get it later and in a more useful location. Additionally, you make a few different layouts of the same rooms. So a &apos;goblin barracks&apos; will be the same sort of thing each time, but a different layout. It might be bigger or smaller. Also, each room you draft adds to the wandering monster table. So, for example, once you&apos;ve drafted a troll room, trolls will be wandering around.

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• PE

  @pedrobastos8132 · 6 years ago

  It would be cool if, after doing this series, you made a livestream of yourself making a dungeon, sorta like the ones where you read the DMG

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• MA

  @macoppy6571 · 1 year ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tpRLEfKCTs&amp;t=542">9:02</a> “If everything is just a series of shoebox shaped spaces, it becomes repetitive very quickly.”<br><br>Ben calls out my house as boring 😑

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• LE

  @leonielson7138 · 5 years ago

  The party is hired to explore a dwarven mine that has gone silent.<br>1. Multiple Entrances: The main gates are barred from the inside and can&apos;t be opened, so the party must either find a crevasse or enter through the cemetery (which has a few low-level undead wandering about, and one higher level undead that they should run from).<br>2. Why was it built?: Dwarves have been mining here for centuries, long before elves or any other race settled in this area. Most believe that it&apos;s more cultural than anything else, but the longest lived races (elves and gnomes) know that they craft adamantine weapons and armor here, and their greatest come here to spend their last life energies creating a magical weapon or armor.<br>3. Levels: The first underground level has temples to the gods that have been improved and expanded on over time. Below that are the workshops and storage spaces, living quarters, and finally the active mine. It would be good to note that these levels were once themselves active parts of the mine, and when the vein was chased to its end the dwarves repurposed the tunnels as they chased other veins.<br>4. Loops: In order to get around the dwarves put in lifts and slides that would allow them to move people and material to the various levels by the most efficient path possible. As the veins branched out these routes became more elaborate and convoluted.<br>5. Verticality: Occasionally they would find large deposits, and would mine out large rooms that spanned multiple levels so that they could get at the adamantine from all sides. Balconies look in on these rooms, and they might also be converted into temples of one god or another.<br>6. Secret Areas: There is a dwarven god of secrets, his followers keeping dark rites meant to hide things from the divination of the other priests. In the higher levels these might be rooms where dwarf children can hide in the case of an emergency, or a rally point for defenders full of additional weapons and potions.<br>7. Variety in room types: Dwarves like geometrical patterns, but they are also individualists, so no two rooms should be identical.<br>8. Tactically useful areas: Choke points, bridges, galleries, in the undeveloped portions of the mine these should be natural formations, but elsewhere they should have been planned by the dwarves to defend their homes. Originally these would have been defenses from the wild creatures of the world, or the elves. Lower down (near the bottom of the mine) the defenses should shift from keeping things from coming in from above to keeping things from coming in from below.<br>9. Spying opportunities: Deep in the Underdark a group of Duergar were following other veins of adamantine up to its source, and eventually their tunnels intersected with the Dwarves digging from the top down. A war between the two groups ensued, and victorious the Duergar took their captives down to their section to use as slave labor. If the party can be stealthy enough they can spy on the duergar and learn what their plans are, were the captives are being held, or about other dangers within the mines.

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• CA

  @Candyapplebone · 3 years ago

  “The level of the dungeon should correspond to the level of the character” dude i never thought about it this way! This will make building my encounter tables so much easier!!

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• AG

  @AgentofFortune1188 · 5 years ago

  loops allow the monsters to cicle around behind you. &nbsp;DM: What is your marching order. &nbsp;PC mage: &nbsp;I am in the back. &nbsp;DM: &nbsp;(smiles!!)

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• BA

  @Baulderstone1 · 5 years ago

  Another benefit to adding verticality to a dungeon is that it makes old school thieves much more valuable. It&apos;s common to criticize thieves in old school D&amp;D for their low skills, but even 1st-level thieves have amazing climbing skills (87% in B/X, for example). When you make your dungeons out of flat levels on graph paper, you deny thieves the ability to use their best class ability. Adding verticality allows them lots of options when it comes to both exploration and combat tactics.

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• AL

  @alamos52 · 5 years ago (edited)

  Ben -- <b>whispering</b> I understood your secret message about having multiple entrances/exits to a dungeon. We&apos;re going to get you out of there, man!

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• VA

  @valfredodematteis-poet · 4 years ago

  man you don&apos;t know how much I appreciate your channel, I&apos;ve been a DM for 12 years but only now, after a 2 years break from D&amp;D, I&apos;m coming back again to it with a new &quot;conscience&quot;, reflecting more about the game and the essential aspetcs of it. your channel really helps me a lot to focus on certain dimensions of the game, it&apos;s a great job you do, thanks! also, I&apos;m very interested in vintage and Old School fantasy also, so your videos are really perfect to gain a better knowledge on that

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• SA

  @Samurai_Punk · 5 years ago

  WOW! Just great. Straight to the point and not a word wasted. Thank you.

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• GR

  @greatoldoneschannel · 3 years ago

  Fantastic! A Time Bandits map on the back wall! Secret areas in the dungeon are great. The main story is only part of the dungeon. Extras can be gained from &quot;side quests&quot; in the dungeon that don&apos;t matter for solving the original problem. Leaves things for the players to go back for.

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