The Logical Dungeon
Dungeon adventures are such a significant chunk of the hobby, the topic does deserve some attention all its own. Someone recently posted a link to another blogger’s article with their advice for designing dungeons. And without the slightest sense of irony, the person who posted the link commented about how as young teens the dungeons were completely random with no logic, and it was fun. But now he puts more thought into things.
Things always used to be fun, it seems. What happened? The answer is always assumed to be "we just grew up." My answer is a bit different. I can only speak for myself, but maybe a lot of others have experienced the same thing. I used to have fun, then I started reading advice like the one in that blog post linked. And, by the way, I don’t need to link the article because chances are you’ve already seen the advice. it’s always been the same advice. Over and over again. It hasn’t changed in at least 25 or 30 years. Yet everyone’s dungeons still suck enough that people continue to demand more advice to make things fun. Which is great for a little cottage industry. Great for bloggers. Great for game writers. From where I stand as someone who actually plays the game, though? It’s just plain dysfunctional.
But since it’s impossible to unring the bell, impossible to be kids again, impossible to recapture the innocence, I suppose it might be helpful for me to point out why “logical” dungeon design is actually illogical in a way mature, adult gamers can appreciate.
For starters, the article itself points out that, hey, dungeons had an original purpose when they were built, and then there’s a current purpose now. That’s great insight. But why stop there? These dungeons could be ancient, having been re-purposed over and over again. New rooms built, dividing walls erected, knocked down, new tunnels dug, secret passages built, passages barred off, cave-ins, critters that devour raw mineral, changes in subterranean water levels, and the list goes on an on. The end result may not be random, each change being logical over time, but it’s certainly highly probable that it would be seemingly random. So why not just do random?
One of my favorite essays, having nothing to do with gaming, is “I, Pencil” by Leonard E Read. In this essay, Read demonstrates how no single person on earth can even make something so simple and humble as a pencil. Sure, there are pencil manufacturers. But they don’t produce the raw materials on their own. They look to other companies to do that. And the lumber companies that produce the wood, they don’t make their own saws. There’s another manufacturer that does that. And that manufacturer doesn’t mine the ore it makes the tools out of. Mining companies do that. But miners likewise use tools and rely on other manufacturers to make their tools. On and on, the chain goes. The entire process requires millions of people speaking at least a dozen different languages and across many nations.
Well, if no one has all the knowledge necessary to make a single pencil, why would a DM ever be expected to have a complete conception of what the dungeon is, who built it, why, what’s its history, and so on down the laundry list of things gaming’s fun-busting and finger-waggers insist is oh so important to design? Where is the logic in any of this?
Let it be random. Let it be unexpected. Let it surprise the bejeezus out of you. Allow yourself to look upon the map you’ve created--haphazardly and/or with the help of random dungeon creation tools--almost like you’re looking at a rorschach ink blob and then allow your imagination to start making sense of what you see. You can still function as an editor with full rational capacities, but you can only do so if first there is something unique and original to edit!
If one section of the mess looks like it could have once been a castle kitchen with some nearby servants quarters, then fine! Pick a type of stone you like for a castle and note that that part of the dungeon is made from that sort of stone. If another part looks like something an insane wizard would build, then by all means fill it with insane traps and weird magical gizmos. If another part looks just like some central cavern with random tunnels leading from it, maybe a bunch of rock-eating worms were hatched there, and that’s what formed the tunnels. And any time the tunnel ceases to look like something a rock-eating worm could have made, or crosses something that does, you can imagine some intelligent creature came upon the passages and formations and either bricked it off or piggy-backed onto it for his own purposes.
And now we’ve got a dungeon that is constructed out of a mish-mash of materials. Players who are careful to note them may be able to infer where in the dungeon they are if they ever get lost. Or they might provide the astute players with clues as to what’s ahead. Because players are trying to make sense of the dungeon, too. They’re just viewing the rorschach from a different perspective. Often I find their insight to be greater than that of the Dungeon Master.
So basically, be completely random. If in your snarky nerdiness you question some particular random thing as “unrealistic” or “illogical”, don’t hang onto your negativity like you’re going to foist it on Bill Shattner with a barrage of stupid questions at a Star Trek convention. That’s the negativity that kills the fun. So answer your own damn questions! You’re the dungeon master. And if you do something really stupid and never thought to question it? Then it’s probably not all that important. It’s not a detail that slipped through the cracks that you should be paranoid about. It’s okay for it to be stupid. If it’s a mystery to you, it will be a mystery to the players, and mystery will make your dungeon more compelling and memorable. If your dungeon is perfectly rational and logical with a history to match, etc, etc, then tear it out of your notebook (or print it out), crumple it up, and throw it away. It’s no good to anyone.
The #1 reason you're dissatisfied with your dungeons is because your creative muscle in dungeon design has been strangled, suffocated, and ultimately atrophied by the burden of 3 decades worth of advice. Yes. Castle Ravenloft was awesome. That doesn’t mean every dungeon should be designed just like that. Even when advice is good, at best it will improve your designs only marginally. The real game-changer is to rebuild your creative muscle first. And that means, at least for now, unloading the burden of that advice. Once your creativity is back at its peak, then you can try reincorporating that advice to refine things. But don’t overdo it. Periodically get back to the basics of placing creativity first, “mature,” “logical,” and “rational” last.
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