SkylerJB
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First off let me start off by declaring my problem. I'm pretty terrible at designing 'Dungeons' in Pathfinder. Actually in my years of experience as a GM I've never once ever consider myself strong in that area.
Now that is to say I don't consider myself inexperience. I'm pretty confident in my skills as a GM and I have a strong grasp on pretty much everything. The thing is when it comes to developing a dungeon delve wherever it's a haunted mansion or a old ruin temple leading to an underground labyrinth I can't seem to do it. I spend wasteful hours in front of graph papers and note sheets to end up blank or tearing the paper away in frustration.
Generally I'm a GM who likes to prepare way ahead of time. I have my entire plot plan, NPCs flesh out, store list written out, villages drawn and so on. I like to be prepared. For whatever reason I always waste hours away just trying to build those damn dungeon crawls that my players love. For a while I put them aside for the wilderness and urban adventures but I know my player's aren't always satisfied by that and personally even I want to run a dungeon or two. It just I can't seem to grasp the concept right.
So what I'm asking for aid. How do you, fellow GMs, do it? How to manage to build these 'dungeons'? Do you guys just wing it or is there a pattern you follow? I would appreciate any advice really.
Of course I presume some specifications would help so here's my biggest issue is drawing/designing dungeons. I'm terrible at level design. (Fail my level design course in college as well. Just isn't my calling.) Is there anything out there that could give me some sort of guidelines of how a dungeon should be build? Like how a entrance should be done and all the rooms that connect.
I look at other dungeons and I just can't seem to grasp how people end up with the results. For myself I start with the entrance and try to design the following rooms and then things just spiral downwards as I feel the place is fake. I'm a by-the-book kind of person and without guidelines I have a hard time coming up with stuff.
