Kobold Guide To Dungeons
Kobold Guide To Dungeons
TO DUNGEONS
WITH ESSAYS BY
KEITH AMMANN, KEITH BAKER, WOLFGANG BAUR, DAVID “ZEB” COOK, SADIE LOWRY,
FRANK MENTZER, BRUCE NESMITH, ERIN ROBERTS, LAWRENCE SCHICK, AND MORE!
EDITED BY JOHN JOSEPH ADAMS
Praise for Guides from Kobold Press
KOBOLD GUIDE TO GAMEMASTERING
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With essays by
Keith Ammann
Keith Baker
Wolfgang Baur
Bryan Camp
Christopher M. Cevasco
David “Zeb” Cook
Dominique Dickey
Kelsey Dionne
Basheer Ghouse
Rajan Khanna
Sadie Lowry
Frank Mentzer
Bruce Nesmith
Erin Roberts
Lawrence Schick
James L. Sutter
Barbara J. Webb
AUTHORS
Keith Ammann, Keith Baker, Wolfgang Baur, Bryan Camp, Christopher M. Cevasco, David “Zeb”
Cook, Dominique Dickey, Kelsey Dionne, Basheer Ghouse, Rajan Khanna, Sadie Lowry, Frank
Mentzer, Bruce Nesmith, Erin Roberts, Lawrence Schick, James L. Sutter, and Barbara J. Webb
All Rights Reserved. Reproduction of this book in any manner without express
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ISBN-13: 978-1-950789-49-8
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Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................9
John Joseph Adams
The Book of Five 10-Foot Poles ..............................................................11
Lawrence Schick
More than Just a Hole in the Ground.....................................................16
David “Zeb” Cook
A Dungeon is a Story................................................................................23
Dominique Dickey
No Empty Rooms......................................................................................28
James L. Sutter
Emotional Storytelling in Dungeon Design..........................................33
Sadie Lowry
Sound the Alarm! .....................................................................................38
Christopher M. Cevasco
Ripples ........................................................................................................43
Frank Mentzer
The Playground Dungeon........................................................................47
Kelsey Dionne
Zen and the Art of Loot Distribution.....................................................52
Bruce Nesmith
D&D&D&D&D................................................................................................56
Rajan Khanna
A fter nearly fifty years of Dungeons & Dragons, we’re all well familiar
with the concept of what a dungeon is.
At its most basic, a dungeon is any kind of underground/indoor locale
that player characters or protagonists must traverse in order to complete
their quest. They’re frequently subterranean, in old castles or ruins, or
formed from a series of natural (or unnatural) caverns.
But could a haunted mansion be a “dungeon”? Sure! Could a
difficult‑to‑traverse forest full of nasty thorns and brambles? Why not!
Often, of course, dungeons are very dangerous places filled with monsters
and traps and other hazards. But maybe they don’t always need to be to
still be compelling.
In this anthology, you’ll find seventeen essays exploring various facets
of dungeon design, from using all three dimensions to where and how
to drop loot to how to pack your dungeons not only with a gamut of
monsters, but a gamut of emotions as well.
I asked these writers to not let the default idea of what a dungeon is stand
in their way—that I wanted to see essays that honor the history and craft of
the dungeon designs that molded us, but also ones that look to the future
and explore the limits of what a dungeon can be.
So grab your torches, your ten-foot-poles, your fifty feet of rope, and your
pitons, and let’s get delving!
Pole 1: Boundaries
Dungeons & Dragons, the first commercially-available roleplaying game,
added new concepts to the storyteller’s toolbox, some of which have
become so pervasive and familiar in modern media that it almost seems as
if they have been around forever. These ideas include a character’s health or
hit points, defensive armor values, character skillsets grouped together as
classes, and the revolutionary idea of character progression—or “leveling
up.” Among these influential and now-classic concepts must be included
the idea of the dungeon, an enclosed, usually underground location
consisting of a series of dangerous puzzle or combat areas, spaces that are
encountered in a sequence defined by the dungeon’s layout.
1
AKA the original Dungeons & Dragons ruleset (1974). Sometimes referred to as “0e.” —ed.
Pole 3: Pacing
It’s time to talk about pacing, which means we’re getting down to the real
nuts and bolts of building a dungeon: setups, payoffs, and players’ limited
attention spans. Crunchy!
The long-term goal that defines your dungeon’s theme is set up at the
beginning and isn’t paid off until the end. However, along the way you’re
going to want to set up a series of short-term goals with sooner payoffs
to keep players focused on the task at hand . . . and providing them with
gratifying rewards for doing so.
Pole 4: Mechanics
Players love figuring out how to solve problems in unexpected ways.
Nothing is more gratifying, but how do you encourage that?
Show your work! An RPG incorporates dozens or even hundreds of
simple rule systems that synergize to create a pleasing complexity that
enables story to happen. Many of these rules define the player characters’
capabilities, but players won’t use their abilities if they can’t see how to
apply them. But you can help them: when you create a situation for the
players to interact with or solve, set it up so they can clearly see how it
works. Expose the situation in a way that reveals the physical setup, its
functionality, dangers, and potential vulnerabilities. Don’t hide anything
unless you want part of the situation to be a surprise.
This applies to more than just the mechanics of physical situations; if
part of the problem involves relationships between NPCs, build in a way
to convey those relationships to the players. If they can see all the working
parts, physical, magical, and social, they can decide which skills or assets
in their character’s toolbox are most likely to give them a successful (or at
least interesting) result.
Pole 5: Vistas
This pole ties in closely with the previous one. Classic dungeons are tight,
narrow, claustrophobic places, with stone walls and low ceilings, but there’s
no reason to stick to that paradigm. Your adventure setting will maintain
interest and spark surprise by mixing in medium-sized, large, and even vast
spaces, with vaulted ceilings or even open to the sky above. For maximum
impact—and to give players a chance to really take in a space and plan how
to deal with it—it’s useful to have the obvious route into such a large space
lead quickly to a vista, a literal overview of the space that enables it to tell
its story. (In cinema, this is called an establishing shot.)
In most cases, you’ll want the vista to also be a place of concealment, a
safe spot from which players can consider their strategy and tactics. You
might also want it to look like entering the encounter space from the vista
is a one-way trip, with no obvious way to get back out once you go in: this
raises the dramatic stakes of continuing forward, invites players to pause to
consider their options, and makes it feel like an act of courage to advance
onward. Players may hesitate, but ultimately, they enjoy proving themselves
fearless. Help them be bold.
Prisoners . . . or Cheese?
Dungeons like those found in movies and fantasy novels—massive
underground complexes with spaces for torture and imprisonment—are
rarer than hen’s teeth in the real world. Building castles meant digging a
big pit for the foundations for walls and towers. Rather than fill a perfectly
good pit with a bunch of cells, the space inside the tower foundations would
be used for things like storerooms, cisterns, cesspits, wells, even tunnels
that led outside the walls. Cells and torture chambers were generally not
part of plan. Storage space was more important than cells especially since
influential prisoners could be locked in towers while the less important
were put in storerooms, locked in cages, chained to stakes outside, or put
wherever was convenient until their punishment could be administered.
For a fantasy campaign, the good news is that every baron worth his
salt should have at least a fortified tower if not a proper full castle, leaving
the countryside dotted with structures old and new. Under each of these
is likely a small collection of chambers which, while not spectacular, are
worthwhile places to explore. Occupied castles might have an armory,
treasury, arcane workshop, a valuable hostage, a lone mad prisoner, or even
a problematic pet dragon. Abandoned and ruined castles could become
a monster den, a pious monk’s hermitage, shelter for runaway peons, a
bandit stronghold, the home of a shunned hedge wizard, a sinister cult’s
altar, the cache of a smuggling gang, a necromancer’s ossuary, or even a
portal to a dangerous place. For lore, such ruins beg the question of who
lived there and what happened to them? Were they loved by the peasants
or were they cruel landlords? Did orcs overrun their manor and wipe them
out in the last invasion? What is the tragic tale of their downfall?
. . . Or Not
The Catholic Inquisition was responsible for a number of notorious
prisons and torture chambers. Many were official palaces of the Church
or the government built in the center of cities to impress. Since torture
was a means to extract confessions of heresy, these palaces had a fearsome
reputation where the accused were held until they recanted their heresies,
regardless of actual facts. Still, they had more than just cells and torture
chambers for the accused; the palaces included trial chambers, rooms for
officials, even scriptoriums where the records of the Inquisition were kept. It
took thick walls to keep the screams from disturbing clerks. Examples, now
museums, are still found in Malta, Portugal, Mexico City, and Cartagena.
Lost Cities?
Is there a historical analogue for underground cities popular in some
fantasies? Yes, there are multiple examples, of which Derinkuyu in Turkey
is the most famous. Carved out of soft rock in ancient times, it was a
series of chambers and tunnels up to eighty meters deep in some places,
that could house upwards of 20,000 people. It had stables, storerooms,
wine presses, and chapels in addition to simple housing. Fresh air and
some sunlight entered through central shafts. It is connected to Kaymalki,
another cave city, by a nine kilometer tunnel. All told there are two
hundred or more underground villages and settlements in the region.
Similar cave complexes were built in China. One of the best known is the
Guyaju Caves. Carved into the side of a cliff, it has 350 rooms spread across
multiple levels. Another is the shrine complex of the Maijishan Grottoes
in Gansu province. It consists of 194 cave shrines carved into the side of
a rock tor where monks lived and received pilgrims who came to visit the
shrines.
Elsewhere in the world are other settlements carved into stone. The most
famous is Petra in Jordan with its elaborate architecture. Iran boasts the
ancient Persian underground city of Nushabad with three different levels
twenty to sixty meters underground. In Georgia, the remote monastery city
of Vardzia is claimed to once have had 6,000 rooms built in thirteen layers
up the mountainside. The Bandigara Escarpment in Mali includes cliff
tombs and villages built under the overhangs of the giant rock wall.
In almost all cases, the inspiration to dig underground cities wasn’t
architectural. It was fear. Underground cities made good fortresses and
shelters against invading armies. Even into the modern age tunnels were
dug for barracks and storerooms. Fearful of Napoleon in the 1800s, the
English dug military tunnels under Dover Castle. Before WWII, the French
created the massive but ultimately futile underground fortresses of the
Maginot Line and, somewhere in the Rockies, the Cheyenne Mountain
NORAD base still exists. In a fantasy campaign, who knows what
underground strongholds fearful people or paranoid kings might create?
Freytag’s Pyramid
At its simplest, Freytag’s Pyramid consists of an inciting incident to get
the story started, rising tension toward a dramatic climax, and then a clear
resolution where we see whether our hero(es) achieved their goal. Here’s
how you can apply its tenets to dungeon design:
EXPOSITION
Why do the PCs need to enter this dungeon? What obstacles and rewards
do they expect to find inside? How do their expectations differ from what
you really have in store for them?
INCITING INCIDENT
What’s the impetus that gets the adventure started? Establish the stakes—
is there some immediate sense of danger, as soon as they’ve crossed the
threshold? What prevents the party from turning back when things get
tough? Why do they have to see this through?
RISING ACTION
This section makes up the majority of the dungeon. As the PCs explore,
things get increasingly tense. Maybe they face traps, puzzles, or combat (or
all three). All of this builds to the . . .
CLIMAX
This is where your players get what they came for—if you promised them a
dragon, give them the dragon. If you promised them a haunting, give them
vengeful wraiths. This should be the culmination of everything you’ve built
in the Rising Action phase; perhaps a relic they found in an earlier cavern
is the key to defeating the ogre at the heart of the mountain, or maybe
blood from a foe they bested in the basement appeases the hungry ghost in
the haunted manor’s attic.
RESOLUTION
Hand out loot, XP, and other goodies—and congratulate everyone at the
table (including yourself!) for a job well done.
***
Characters enter a dungeon in pursuit of a goal, achieve that goal, and
then find themselves changed in the process. This is a story, told by way of
a location, using a classic dramatic structure.
Climax / Resolution
I’ll leave you with this: it is impossible that your dungeon crawl will
entirely go according to plan. The PCs will approach challenges in ways
you hadn’t accounted for, throw themselves into fights you expected them
to run from, and traverse the dungeon in a different order than what your
notes suggested. But thinking of the dungeon as a cohesive story allows
you to maintain a rough idea of what needs to happen when and why . . .
which will help you keep your cool when it all inevitably goes to shit.
Menagerie Dungeons
“Menagerie dungeon” is my term for the classic first-edition-style romp
where inhabitants seem plucked at random from a bestiary. For as long
as there have been roleplaying games, there have been people making
fun of menagerie dungeons. How, these folks ask, could there possibly
be minotaurs in one room, devils in the next, and an owlbear in the hall
between? And why hasn’t the dragon next door eaten them all? Yet these
questions aren’t a reason to jettison the menagerie—you just need to
answer them.
Logical Dungeons
“Logical dungeons” are those in which it’s immediately clear why all
the monsters are present. These dungeons are in some ways easier to
populate: the kobold den has kobolds, the monastery is home to monks,
the roving tower of the clockwork mage is full of . . .well, you get the idea.
Yet while that’s a great place to start, combat can get old quickly if your
dungeon is a monoculture.
One way around this is to look for excuses to add in other creatures—
as prisoners, pets, predators, and so forth. Maybe the kobolds lured an
owlbear into one of their caverns but now have no idea how to control it,
or have tunneled into an old wizard’s workshop and now live in an uneasy
truce with the golems that guard it. Yet even if you don’t want to add in
other creature types, it’s still vital to give each battle or encounter a unique
flavor. If your first encounter is against kobolds who rush in with spears,
the next should be with kobold archers who hide and snipe with poisoned
arrows, while the third includes a cleric who tries to con the PCs or sets
them on fire.
Make it Memorable
However you choose to go about crafting your dungeon, remember that
roleplaying—and fantasy in general—is all about experiencing things you’ve
never encountered before. So don’t fall into the trap of serving players the
same predictable dungeon rooms over and over. Next time you’re facing
down a bunch of empty encounter areas, take the time to imagine at least
one unique detail for each of them. Your players will thank you.
1. Atop the tower, you close the journal lying at the feet of the once-powerful
mage as your eyes trace her blackened corpse. With a flicker of pity, you
pry the relic she had fought so hard to obtain from her charred fingers and
leave her there, on the hundredth floor of this grotesque monument to her
hubris, smoldering in her bitter, underwhelming end.
2. The mansion exudes malice and violence—and blood. The lord has left the
bottom floor a massacre of bodies, their limp forms adorning the golden
staircase flanked by statues of his own glorious form. Disgusted, you ascend
the staircase toward the hymnal room where cultists swear their fealty to
their master as the lord himself stands before the altar, ritually washing the
remains of a fresh sacrifice from his hands. The repulsive crimson stains on
his fingers never fully fade.
3. An unwilling shiver crawls down your spine as a wailing rises around
you. You crest the hill of the graveyard and look out at the undead clawing
from their graves, your heart thundering in your ears as you grip your
holy blade. These are the faces of your childhood village, now ghoulish and
screaming, a swarm between you and the lich who commands them. You
must not falter now.
Conclusion
Breaking down your dungeon into acts, beats, and a story arc can help you
pinpoint how and when to push on the PCs’ emotions. Ask yourself the
following questions:
• What about the dungeon conflicts with something about the PCs?
How can you represent that in the first story beat?
• What midpoint changes or recontextualizes everything?
• What additional story beat (that ideally was created by the midpoint)
conflicts with something about the PCs?
• When closing off the dungeon, how do you allow the PCs to change,
grow, or reaffirm themselves and their emotions?
A true primer on emotional storytelling in dungeons (and/or stories)
could fill a whole book, but the tools presented here are a great place to
start. Not every dungeon needs to have such heavy emotional weight. But
when you want your players to feel, when you want what they’re doing to
matter, these tools will help you weave the dungeon and the PCs together,
creating a nuanced and impactful dungeon that they’ll remember for years
to come.
“It may have nothing to do with Peregrin’s foolish stone; but probably
something has been disturbed that would have been better left quiet.”
—The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien
Size Matters
There might be more practical reasons why certain dungeon denizens do not
converge immediately on a noisy party. Very large creatures might not be
able to pass through narrow passages to reach the source of the disturbance.
In that case, however, the GM should consider how such a large creature
got into that part of the dungeon in the first place. A flying creature, for
example, might have an overhead shaft to the sky, through which it can exit
and enter that particular section of the dungeon; or the creature might have
been teleported into the space by a mage who keeps it fed as a pet. Similarly,
a guardian monster might have been chained in a particular area to prevent
it from roaming free and causing indiscriminate havoc.
What’s important here, however, is that it is made clear to the players why
this particular monster did not come find them when they were smashing
dinnerware in a nearby room, thus maintaining the sense of verisimilitude
and of an environment that is both dynamic and logical.
S ince this is a book about dungeons, first things first. What are
“dungeons” and why do they exist? (Fear not, this part is real short.)
In this context, a dungeon is a setting within a fantasy role2 game. Though
historically dungeons were rare and small (a few rooms under a building),
they have of course become ubiquitous—a solid gaming trope. Dungeons
now come in all forms . . . an old mine, the decks of a spaceship, a military
complex, and more. These dungeons all serve one primary function: to
confine the action in the game.
A role game with a dungeon is played by a group of several people, and
the game is complicated because of the ways in which they interact.
Us as Players:
a1. Sharing non-game personal things, about our lives and opinions;
a2. Talking about other things and people in the world;
a3. Game-specific details—procedures, dice, etc.
Us as Our Characters:
c1. Reflecting a life and opinions about their world;
c2. Actions in pursuit of individual success and a career;
c3. Participating as a team member, with specific talents.
While playing in a role game, we switch between these six viewpoints
instantly, prompted by both casual dialogue and game events.
For example: while a character is in combat with a troll (c3), the player
makes a quip based on a recent film (a2), and another makes a personal
2
I use “role game” in preference to “roleplaying” game, because we don’t play “boardplaying” games.
3
On a personal note I admit to a strong bias against illogic, even in fantasy games. I want my magic
to work like a science, repeatable and with defined rules. Given the far reaches of imagination a
“unified field theory of magic” is hard to achieve, but we can get pretty close. This approach is not
for everyone of course, but I’m a game designer, so that’s my method.
4
Yet unlike all other “games” in human history, in a role game everybody wins; the losers are
(generally speaking) just imaginary monsters. This unique feature is directly responsible for the
passion that drives the hobby of role games.
W hen you were a kid, would you rather have gone to a museum or
a playground?
Some of us would have preferred the museum (and with good reason),
but many of us would have charged straight toward that playground for an
afternoon of ripping the knees out of our new pants.
The thing is, playgrounds are highly engaging for kids. Young humans are
at the stage in life where they want to mess with their environment and use
their physicality.
Playgrounds are great places for kids with boundless energy, a penchant
for make-believe, and the desire to socialize. They can race to the top of the
jungle gym, climb on ropes, go down slides, throw a ball around, crawl into
tunnels, dig in the sand, and try to knock each other off the monkey bars.
A place of unlimited fun!
On the other hand, kids don’t tend to love museums as much (museums
for adults, anyhow).
And it makes sense. Your typical museum is a place where people are
encouraged to look, but not touch. Museums are quiet, reverent, clean,
static, and full of valuable things that absolutely cannot be broken. If you
try to slide down the glass-and-steel spiral stairs in a museum, you’re going
to have an encounter with 1d6 security guards in short order.
Which sounds like more fun for a group of adventurers (and real people
playing games)?
Interactivity ≠ Enticing
It’s important to note that while high interactivity requires things to engage
with, that is not all it requires; you must ensure those things are enticing.
Imagine, if you will, a room full of buttons. Buttons on the walls, the floor,
the ceiling! They’re red, blue, yellow, flashing, strobing, buzzing. There are
so many buttons that you could spend an hour just trying to press them
all. What do they all do? Why are they different colors? Are the flashing
buttons special in some way?
So far, we have a lot of interactivity going on, and a lot of enticement.
But wait! What if every time you pushed a button, you got a painful zap?
Suddenly, we go from sky-high interactivity to very low interactivity.
After a few zaps, you would bail on that beautiful room that had once filled
you with curiosity.
Ultimately, you were discouraged from pushing the buttons. Effectively,
you were being punished, repeatedly, for messing with them.
Story-Centric Campaigns
Let’s start with story-centric campaigns, since they are the easiest to
manage. These campaigns aren’t about the numbers. So you can’t just hand
Casual Campaigns
Loot dispersal in casual campaigns is a bit more challenging. Give out
items that do quirky and funny things. Boots that let you jump greater
distances . . . but only if you jump backwards. Weapons that function as +1
only if you shout a personalized insult to your opponent as you attack. The
zanier the better. The goal is to get everyone laughing at what results.
In this kind of campaign, give the PCs just enough coin to get themselves
into trouble. They likely don’t want to have to worry about their cash
reserves, so give them enough to buy a small boat or house (. . . that’s
haunted). Or to hire a servant (. . . that has a bad attitude). Or maybe to
have a bard following them around singing of their deeds (. . . who secretly
resents them). They’ll enjoy getting and spending the money . . . and then
dealing with the consequences of their purchases.
Optimizer Campaigns
Figuring out how much (and what kind of) loot to dole out to a group of
optimizer players is the most difficult scenario to manage. Players who
love this kind of game are typically the sort that tend to know the rules
and lore very well and are familiar with all of the magic items available in
the core sourcebooks.
The advice below for laying out loot rewards also works well for casual
and story campaigns. However, in those cases, make the loot appropriate as
described above. Those player still appreciate a good loot progression, even
if it’s not the most important part of the game for them.
The first step to take here is to determine how long you anticipate your
campaign lasting. Not in years, but in player levels. This can be a difficult
question, because campaigns frequently fizzle out sooner than anticipated
or sometimes go on well beyond initial expectations. Err on the side of
longer, since it’s better to be prepared.
Next, map out all the major magic items you want to give your players
Living Dungeons
A dungeon can be organic, made out of a living (or recently living) thing.
Let’s consider a couple of examples.
THE MOTHER TREE
Let’s imagine a giant tree in a forest with chambers carved out of (or
maybe even grown inside) its trunk. The tree is large enough to house a
small community. Perhaps elves lived there, or a society of druids, or an
alien race. It’s Discrete, certainly, a singular tree, self-contained. To make it
Distinct, let’s call it The Mother Tree, a magical, ancient oak that welcomed,
fed, and took care of the creatures living inside of it.
So where’s the Danger? We can develop that along with the tree’s history.
For centuries, The Mother Tree lived in a kind of symbiosis with the
creatures within it, each supporting the other, but then its roots became
tainted. Perhaps a denizen of the tree was experimenting with dark magics
and (accidentally or purposely) summoned a great evil. Perhaps an asteroid
contaminated with an alien infection contaminated the water supply that
the tree’s roots drank from. Whatever the reason, the taint spread through
the great oak and to the denizens within. Some of the inhabitants killed
one another. Others went mad. The most ardent of the tree’s servants were
corrupted and became perverted, dark druids. Outsiders shunned the tree.
It became known as a dark place, once green and pure, now evil.
The Diverse elements can come from the various remaining inhabitants.
Perhaps some of the dead live on as undead. Perhaps some of the rooms
contain intricate traps created by paranoid denizens, now long dead.
Mental Dungeons
A dungeon has to be a place, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be a location.
Consider, for example, a dungeon existing in a creature’s mind.
THE MIND OF MISSEMA THE MAD
Missema the Mad is a powerful wizard who has been afflicted with a
strange madness that has resulted in amnesia, but holds, somewhere in
her mind, knowledge necessary to further the party’s goals. The only way
to unlock the information, and/or restore Missema’s mind, is to enter
her mind and find it. The PCs might enter her mind through magical or
technological means, finding within a mental construct of a wizard’s tower
or insane asylum. Missema’s mind is Discrete and certainly Distinct, tied as
it is to a singular person. Danger and Diversity could arise from creatures
and other interactions drawn from Missema’s past. Perhaps instead of
rooms, the party has to make their way through different memories,
resolving each one before proceeding to the next, forced to fight bogeymen
and enemies from Missema’s history, or forced to solve puzzles that help
resolve her inner conflicts. Perhaps there’s even treasure, appearing as
objects in Missema’s mind, but are really sources of information, or even
spells, that exist in the real world.
Otherworldly Dungeons
Dungeons can also be otherworldly, dealing with dimensions, planes, or
even other planets.
THE PLANAR HUB
Imagine a dungeon that has, instead of doors leading to different rooms, a
series of portals leading to different planar regions. Enter the portal to your
left, and you’re transported to an ancient forest glade defended by sylvan
creatures. Take the portal to your right and you end up on a rock bridge
crossing a magma pool menaced by flying fire creatures. To add more
Danger, perhaps the portals are one-way, forcing the PCs to find a way
back to their home plane.
In a science fiction game, you might have different locations linked by
alien teleportation devices, each keyed to a specific location. The PCs
might be trying to find out what happened to the scientist studying the
devices, encountering the various alien creatures and malfunctioning
technological devices that fill the path across worlds.
E very place has a story to tell—a history that leaves its imprint on the
walls, is altered by the needs and choices of those who have occupied
the space, and exerts force, however small, on the adventurers that pass
through it. Whether you tell that story in meticulous detail or simply let
it fill the atmosphere of your dungeon, leaning into the legacy left behind
by a dungeon’s glorious (or sordid) past helps to add depth, cohesion, and
tension to any adventure.
The south wall of this chamber bears a bas-relief5 of a hideous head [...]
remains of a sandstone altar lie in fragments before this sculpture. (Area 115)
5
The module does not hyphenate “bas-relief,” but my editor informs me the
word needs one. I’ll let him argue it out with Mr. Gygax.
These are just two examples from the first level of the temple, which has
suffered the brunt of the years of conflict. Many of the rooms are like 115,
in that they had a previous purpose (either clearly discernible or lost to
time) but are now ruins or the lair of interlopers. We can infer that the
temple was once much larger, more powerful, but is now struggling to hold
on to its own ground. As we move into the lower levels of the dungeon,
we see less of this decay and more of the current temple’s presence and
strength with more rooms in active use or with a clear, sinister purpose.
But even in the lower levels, we have rooms like Area 224, described as
“[once] one of the many guest rooms of the temple. It now holds a cot […]”
Or Area 317, once a pleasure chamber, now home to the ogres who have
claimed the space.
The walls of this colorful […] room are covered with mosaics, depicting all
sorts of weird and depraved scenes. The floor is a mosaic of like scenes. A few
pieces of broken furniture are stacked near the fireplace in the west wall. Two
heaps of rugs, skins, etc. are by the east wall […] two small pots stand near
the fireplace […]”
There are so many layers here! This room had a purpose. In those few
words, the adventure tells us that the dungeon had a life before the current
monsters moved in—all the while pointing toward a former glory and
power the temple has now lost (and is trying to regain). This is history
made clear.
This huge hall […] has an arched ceiling some 30 feet overhead. The many
buttresses and arches form a tracery of shadowy dimness; the ceiling’s exact
height is not discernible. The floor and walls are covered in slabs of polished
stone, apparently azurite-malachite from the swirls of blue intermingled with
the deep green. Some magic has evidently been placed here, for a soft cloudy
greenish luminosity seeps from the walls and floor, seemingly floating in the
air, making the whole chamber appear as if deep underwater. This impression
is enhanced by the bronze doors, fountain, and other work; all are covered
with verdigris. Even the damp air seems to smell of the sea.
In the middle of the west wall is a great sheet of bronze, a bas-relief of an
underwater vista—seaweed, shells, and various forms of marine life. The head
of a fish-like thing projects from this, a most hideous visage. Its ghastly maw
emits a stream of water, which falls into a tiered series of four basins. The
fourth and largest never overflows, so it must have a drain system somewhere.
Conclusion
Not all of us can make a dungeon like Gary Gygax, but next time you’re
talking about or designing a “classic dungeon crawl,” keep these lessons in
mind. And remember: every bas-relief can have a story to tell, and every
curtain of verdigris can be a part of something bigger.
The last zombie fell to the floor. Abdulhamid scrubbed gore from his sword
as he looked over his comrades. Light injuries, but nothing serious, thanks in
part to Khalid’s timely spellcasting.
“Well,” said Khalid suddenly, “That was a solid workday. Let’s make camp,
yeah? Pick up tomorrow.”
“We woke up two hours ago!” protested Abdulhamid.
“Right, but that was my last fireball. So. . . . Beddy-bye time.”
I f you’ve DMed for a while, you’ve been there. The players get through a
moderately difficult fight where they burned some resources unwisely,
assess their surroundings, and make an immediate tactical decision: they’re
going to take an extremely long nap. Now. In the middle of a dungeon.
Commonly known as the “Fifteen Minute Adventuring Day,” I was
introduced to this concept in high school as the “Guild-Mandated Nap.”
While generally viewed as a playstyle problem, the short adventuring day
can also be seen as a dungeon design problem.
When players try to take a rest mid-adventure, they’re not purposefully
spiting you and probably aren’t trying to break the game’s balance. They’re
reacting to a perceived threat according to their own assumptions, which
they may not even realize that they’re making. This isn’t a wrong or
malicious decision on their part; it’s the intersection of awkward incentives.
At the core of this conundrum is a game-mechanics equation. The
consequence for failure in an adventure is death or, worse, narrative
We don’t think about it much—and it can take years for players to shape
their behavior around it—but standard dungeon design relies on an ironclad
assumption of monstrous naps.
In traditional dungeon design, monsters don’t rally to drive out intruders.
They don’t go from their dormitory to their guard posts to their mess halls
and the lavatory. They don’t evacuate their treasures when they know the
treasury might be under threat. They don’t have actual shift rotations that
players can exploit or that can ruin a solid infiltration plan. Their default
state, when not spurred into action by the presence of PCs, is Nap.
This is because dungeons are traditionally designed as a series of set
pieces: static encounters that only change in the ways noted on the page,
chained together as players move through a location. Random encounter
tables and clever descriptions can provide the illusion of a more organic
design, but traditional dungeon design language has largely left this to the
initiative of individual DMs.
However, by leaving the life and initiative of monsters to table discretion,
you get a culture of play where it doesn’t exist. New DMs don’t necessarily
know to branch out from what the book has presented to them, experienced
ones may not make the time or may forget it in planning. The set-piece
approach becomes ingrained, and the Nap becomes ubiquitous among the
inhabitants of various dungeons. Eventually, the players pick up on this and
feel that this is a rule of how the world works and they can follow suit.
This is the true cause of the short adventuring day. Players have internalized
the rules of the world they play in and try to implement them to their
advantage, but because the rule is now in the open, where everyone sees it
explicitly, it looks like a ridiculous break in verisimilitude. Fixing only the
symptom of that break might work, but it can result in a PCs vs. DM arms
race: the players look for routes to play by the rules they’ve internalized, and
the DM patches up those perceived exploits as they come up.
T here’s an old maxim used to describe both services and products: they
can be Fast, Cheap, or Good. The idea behind it is pretty simple. Let’s
say you want to put a new roof on your house. You can get someone to do
it right away for bargain prices, but you can’t be surprised when the quick
job cheaply done springs a bunch of leaks. Or, you can pay someone who
knows what they’re doing. You might get a discount if you offer to wait,
but if you need it done this week by a trained professional, it’s probably
going to cost you. Fast, Cheap, or Good: pick which two you want, because
getting all three is next to impossible.
There’s a similar decision you have to make when designing dungeons for
your players. You’re not choosing between Fast, Cheap, or Good, of course.
(Though it is fun to imagine a wizard having to decide whether he wants his
lair built by the quick and cheap kobold contractors or the duergar architects
who will demand a dragon’s hoard when they’re done.) Instead, the three
qualities a GM must choose between are Mood, Narrative, and Agency.
Mood
How do you want the dungeon to feel to your players? What emotion are
you trying to evoke? Fear seems like an obvious answer, as the majority
of dungeons are meant to be environments of deadly challenge, but that’s
a little too simplistic. What kind of fear? Fear that their character will
die? Fear that they’ll fail to stop some looming threat? Fear of their soul
being corrupted? Your dungeons can evoke much more nuanced reactions
than merely “this place is trying to kill you.” Nor are you restricted to
Narrative
In my experience, most dungeons function as lockboxes. The thing your
players are supposed to want is hidden deep within it, whether it’s a
treasure to find or an adversary to slay, and the point of the dungeon is to
break into the vault of its design. A heist, in other words.
For the dungeon in this example, though, I wanted to tell a different kind
of story, so I flipped everything in the dungeon around to face the opposite
Agency
Now let’s look at a dungeon that doesn’t look anything like a dungeon at
all. When I wanted my players to have an opportunity to focus on their
choices, I gave them a map of a swamp. Their only real objective (aside
from survival) was to find the person who had gotten lost inside. There
were places of interest marked on the map, a strange lake here, an ancient
tower there, and guides who were willing to help the PCs find their way
from landmark to landmark. But all the choices were theirs to make.
All the reliable hallmarks of a traditional dungeon were there, traps and
puzzles and monsters and treasure—but they were bound by none of the
traditional structures that impose linear movement. There were no doors
to block them, no walls to hem them in. The PCs could go to any landmark
they chose, in any order they chose. They could leave the swamp entirely
and circle around it, entering it from the other direction. Since it was a
living, mutable environment, they could interact with it any number of
ways that would be impossible in rigid catacombs beneath the earth.
Design Breakdown
Once I’d decided on the element I wanted to focus on in each of the
examples above, I also had a second choice to make: I had to choose which
of the three elements I would abandon. In the Mood example, the narrative
of the place was given priority over giving the players an abundance of
options. Focusing on the mood and narrative meant that, by necessity,
a certain amount of choice had to be sacrificed. A dungeon which
under other circumstances might have had multiple ways of reaching its
conclusion only had a single linear path, so that the PCs would encounter
the points of increasing tension at precisely the right moments. In the same
Conclusion
No one kind of dungeon is better than the other. A choice and mood
dungeon is just as enjoyable as a mood and story one. You just have to
be aware of the choices you’re making. No dungeon can tell a coherent,
deliberate narrative, maintain a consistent and pre-planned tone, and offer
its players an abundance of options and open-sandbox freedom. If you can
manage two of those three, though, you’ve built something your players
are likely to enjoy.
Exit Strategy
With that point out of the way, let’s talk about how to plan for the
possibility of defeat at the hands of invaders. Any such plan has to ensure
that a loss is survivable and that it doesn’t result in the destruction
or capture of critical information or priceless loot. Unless things are
significantly worse “out there” than “in here,” a plan for survival must
include a means of escape. An escape plan requires three things: a place to
go, a way to get there, and a way to stall or thwart pursuit. A better escape
plan does one more thing: it allows you to bring your most important
asset(s) with you.
Any place you’re planning to escape to has to meet certain standards. It
has to offer minimally acceptable living conditions: a hospitable climate,
adequate food and water, basic defensibility, and so forth. It has to be
uncontested, not controlled by other enemies, which can be a big problem
in a dungeon: if every location is occupied by one faction or another and
there isn’t a friendly one that can absorb your fleeing forces, you have no
choice but to leave the dungeon altogether. It’s probably not going to be
as good as the place you’re fleeing from; if it were better, you’d have set up
shop there instead in the first place. However, a satellite settlement can
offer you not only safe harbor but also reinforcements with which to return
and reconquer the territory you’ve just given up.
Your route to this escape destination must be unhindered by enemies
as well. If you’re unusually large, like a dragon, it has to be big enough for
you to move through without squeezing. If you’re on the small side, on the
other hand, narrower passages are ideal, since they allow you free passage
while slowing or stopping larger pursuers. Either way, make sure the route
can accommodate not just you and your followers but also any valuable
assets you’re bringing with you. If such assets are too heavy to carry,
include a means of moving them, such as a minecart on rails or a barge on
a subterranean river.
Do Not Follow
Stall pursuers by every means you have at hand. If the escape route doesn’t
lead directly out of the heart of your lair, where your assailants will clearly
see where you’re going when you avail yourself of it, find a way to hide
it, camouflage it, or disguise it. Can you climb or fly? Then make the
route three-dimensional. Can you swim? Place some or all of the route
underwater. Can you burrow? Maybe you don’t need an already existing
exit; maybe you can dig yourself a tunnel! Be sure, though, that you can dig
faster than your pursuers can run—or that you can collapse your tunnel
behind you without also trapping yourself.
If you command followers, you may order them to execute one or more
retreat operations: withdrawing, delaying, or retiring. Withdrawing is when
a creature or group of creatures that’s already engaged in combat with an
enemy tries to leave the scene. It’s difficult, because the enemy can press
forward and force them to continue the fight. It’s therefore wise to order
some of your followers to delay the enemy, occupying their attention and
blocking further progress in order to buy time for the rest to get away.
Finally, retiring is when a creature or group of creatures that aren’t already
engaged in combat try to make their escape. Delay actions are also used to
buy time for this operation, especially when the retiring group has valuable
assets in its possession.
Creatures assigned to delay the enemy are often struck down in the
process, so be sure to command only your most loyal followers to carry out
this operation, or they may decide you’re not worth dying for. If you’re a
powerful creature and also benevolently inclined toward your dependents,
it may be you who delays the enemy in order to allow them to escape.
There’s an old, ruined temple on the edge of town. Everyone knows it’s
haunted, that anyone who ventures inside will face the curse of the ancient
gods. Go ten feet inside and you’ll encounter a trap that spits poison needles.
And yet, a character skilled in Investigation might notice something strange.
The temple has been abandoned for a century, but the poison on such a trap
would surely lose its potency within a year. Even stranger, the old gods of the
temple considered poison to be a coward’s weapon—they wouldn’t defend
their temple with such a trap. So what’s going on?
The Façade follows the time-honored tradition of Scooby Doo. A villain
needs a place to carry out a nefarious plan, and they want to make sure the
locals leave them alone. So they lay claim to a local ruin and take advantage
of existing superstitions—adding traps and defenses to make sure that no
one discovers their secret sanctum at the bottom of the dungeon. Typically
this dressing will follow the overall theme of the dungeon but hold several
clues that suggest things don’t add up. A Religion check reveals that the
old gods despised the use of poison. A Nature check reveals that the dire
wolves have been imported from elsewhere, and the flame patterns in their
fur was applied with dye. The idea of such a dungeon is that it initially
feels like a straightforward and not particularly logical story, but as the
adventurers go deeper they discover that there’s no curse at all, but rather a
compelling modern mystery.
A key question with the Façade dungeon is what the villain is hiding. One
option is that the villain’s plans are directly tied to the location—that while
the temple had been looted long ago, the villain is certain that a powerful
This dungeon is a ruin that’s been abandoned for centuries, and that has
indeed been looted by countless generations of adventurers and meddling
kids. Whatever treasures could be taken were stripped long ago, and
everyone knows there’re no actual traps. At least, there weren’t last week
. . . but there are now. The traps and challenges of the Proving Ground
were created for a purpose, and now that the stars are aligned and the
ancient enemy rises again, the dungeon has come to life. Glyphs of warding
have powered up. Secret doors have been revealed. Guardian beasts have
been summoned out of stasis. And both a treasure and a task await the
champions who can prove themselves worthy.
This allows the Proving Ground to be ancient without raising the question
of why it’s still fully functional, and also avoids any conversations about the
ethics of tomb robbing; this dungeon wants you to claim its treasures, as
long as you’re worthy of them.
If the story of the Proving Ground is well known, this could be an
important part of a primary campaign arc; everyone knows that the Dragon
of Calyth Boc is the big bad, and eventually someone will have to walk
the Slayer’s Path and claim the spear. However, it can also be interesting
to have a Proving Ground whose provenance has been long forgotten. The
villagers know that the old ruin has suddenly come to life, that the Wilson
boy saw golems stomping around in there, but no one knows the reason.
If the adventurers make their way through and claim the artifact that lies
within, they may be charged with a greater purpose as well. Whoever can
take the Crown of Hastalacar is the rightful ruler of the realm, as set forth
in prophecy long ago; if they don’t take the throne, a grave disaster will
befall the kingdom. But today no one remembers the prophecy. Will the
adventurers press their claim, and if not, what disaster will come?
Another option is to combine the Proving Ground and the Façade. The
challenges adventurers face weren’t set up by a forgotten god or ancient
Why fill a structure with traps and deadly monsters? One option is to
protect treasures, certainly. But what if the traps aren’t just there to keep
people out . . . what if they’re holding something in? In this story, people
assume the evil wizard died. But perhaps adventurers of yesteryear
destroyed his tower and bound this vile lich in the catacombs below,
placing the traps to keep anyone from ever releasing him. This helps to
explain why anyone would invest so much effort and mystical power
defending a ruin. In setting an adventure in a literal dungeon, the next
question is whether the adventurers themselves are acting purely out of
ignorance—if no one remembers the true purpose of this place—or if the
adventurers’ patron is intentionally misleading them. The old man isn’t
actually trying to lift the curse on his farm; he was Calastor’s apprentice,
and he’s sure these adventurers have what it takes to blunder through the
dungeon and to free his master.
A Literal Dungeon can be an interesting way to set up a future enemy.
The adventurers triumphantly carve their way through the traps and
summoned guardians and pull the sword from the seal—only to find that
they have unleashed the spirit of darkness across the land, a spirit they
definitely aren’t prepared to fight. This can set in motion a series of future
quests, as they must learn more about this enemy and find a way to rebind
it. While this could be a major campaign arc, it could also just be the work
of a single follow-up adventure; learn the truth and use the sword you
pulled from the seal to drive the fiend back into its prison.
With a Literal Dungeon, one question we must ask is if it’s possible for
the adventurers to figure out the true purpose of the dungeon as they drive
through it. Are there clues that the spirits are Calastor’s wardens, rather
than his servants? Can the heroes realize they’re being duped and turn the
tables on their false patron . . . or will the truth only be revealed when it’s
too late?
Consider the mimic—a creature that can perfectly disguise itself as a piece
of furniture to lure its prey close. The classic mimic takes the form of a
treasure chest, using an adventurer’s greed to lure them to their doom.
But where do mimics come from? One could imagine that the treasure-
chest mimic is the full adult, and baby mimics are the size of coins. On
the other hand, what if the treasure chest is the spawn . . . and the final,
full-grown mimic is a far larger creature that copies not chests or furniture,
but an entire building? Imagine the mimic-spore dropping in a clearing
in the forest and slowly growing . . . first a stone outcropping, then a tiny
crypt, then a series of tunnels, and finally a full-fledged dungeon. What
adventurers see as independent creatures—slimes, puddings, gelatinous
cubes—are in fact all part of the dungeon’s digestive system. The treasures
it contains are things that it’s collected from its previous prey; it consumes
flesh and bone, but coins, arms, and armor are all left behind. Over time
these are swept into hoards by the patrolling oozes or gathered by smaller
mimics . . . but adventurers might also find random scatterings of coins
and equipment, left where they fell.
While the dungeon is alive, the idea is that it’s so large that it no longer
interacts with adventurers directly. It’s full of traps, but those traps are
often alive—piercers fall from the ceiling, lurkers rise up and attempt to
smother our heroes. It’s full of monsters, but those monsters are oozes and
mimics, creatures that have no motives beyond consumption. Given that the
dungeon is a massive mimic, it can change its layout—doors can become
walls, sealing off the path back to the surface. However, in order to give the
adventurers a fighting chance, perhaps the dungeon can’t track the specific
movements of its denizens any more than we know exactly where our food
is in our intestines. The dungeon changes layout on a regular basis, and this
will prevent adventurers from retracing their steps . . . but there always is a
path back to the surface, and if our heroes can figure out the pattern of the
changes, they can find their way out. Of course, even if the dungeon doesn’t
fight the explorers directly, it can still make life difficult. What at first appears
to be a stone floor could become gooey difficult terrain—or a chamber could
have sticky walls and floors, mimicking the adhesive skin of a mimic.
Part of the fun of a living dungeon is the slow revelation to the players.
Think about the order of the clues. First there’s the basic point—there’s no
The Obstacle
The Sunken City of Golath was an outpost of the lost civilization of
the Menethi. They bound fiends and worked great wonders—until the
consequences of their pacts came back to haunt them, and everyone in Golath
was dragged off to the netherland. Golath has stood empty ever since. Looters
have come in search of treasure, and they surely found it . . . but Golath is
still home to countless fiends, and only a fool invites their ire. And today, I’m
afraid we’re the fools. Because the only way we can reach the King in time is
to travel through the Sunken City. Be careful, and don’t touch anything!
You can’t control what players are going to do—that’s half the fun.
But you can control where they do it. That’s a whole other half!
The Kobold Guide to Dungeons gives new and experienced Game Masters
over 100 pages of insight and ideas to help you think outside your own boxes:
This guide features essays from classic RPG voices such as David “Zeb” Cook,
Frank Mentzer, and Lawrence Shick, as well as newer voices such as
Dominique Dickey, James L. Sutter, and Erin Roberts.
Open this book and level up your half of the game!
ISBN 978-1-950789-49-8
$19.99
KOB9498
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