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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.
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I'll go one paragraph at a time, starting at the second.
Sounds like you're being too hard on yourself. Keep a few dungeons that you make and run them. If you have a good grasp of the rules, they will be fun.
I know the feel of prepping ahead of time. I have my next session planned out already, and it will be sometime in January! A good starting dungeon is a corrupted temple or a kobold cave.
I look at layouts of building I go to frequently (That run down temple? I used the layout of my church)and remove/add a few rooms, change their shape slightly, and boom, done.
A dungeon should be built how it would be practical for the current/previous occupants to use it. Large rooms, medium hallways if any, include features like a throne room, prisons, mess halls, armories, etc. They make it seem much more realistic.
People end up with the results by practicing and having their fair share of failed dungeons (for me, that would be a pirate ship... They forgot the dungeon was wood and started casting fireball. Didn't go well.)
I hope this helps.
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When I make a dungeon, I RP the person who made it.
For example, if making a haunted mansion, it was once a nice mansion, so I pretend I'm a rich snooty person designing my own house... we need a room for the nursery, a small prep kitchen near the main sitting are where we entertain guests, a sweeping stairway to impress visitors, and the wife wants an attached greenhouse...
Then of course, I think about how it all went to hell. Who moved in? Which rooms did they trash and where are they sleeping? What'd they do with the furniture?
If the dungeon were a set of tunnels I'd start with an online random cave generator, and then roleplay the evil wizard who stumbled upon it. He had Stoneshape, a dozen Orc slaves and alot of free time, so he'd sculpt and expand the cave into something fitting his needs. He'd make some false passages leading to traps, to reduce the number of infiltrators and escapees, and secret passages to facilitate his escape if things ever went badly. He'd set up a guardpost strategically here ... a food prep area there ... oh and a pit here with an ooze at the bottom, and that's his sewage disposal.
Just roleplay the creators and users and your dungeons will have a life all their own.
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I'd also recommend: don't be ashamed to steal good dungeon designs. Since it sounds to me like map making -- especially starting from scratch -- is the hardest part for you, take a map from a published source and just put your own plot inside it.
There are of course tons of cool dungeon maps in Paizo products, especially in Shattered Star right now. Other ones I'd highlight are the Schloss from Trial of the Beast (pro tip: double the size of everything), or the ruined manor from The Skinsaw Murders, and the other dungeons from Carrion Crown.
Just take the map, then figure out how your own plot would occur in that map. Maybe make some minor alterations where you need to, but don't worry about it too much.
I personally improvise a lot, also when the party decide to go into a dungeon or just have to.
I found out that reading a lot, "wasting" time on wikipedia or some old encyclopedia help a lot.
For example some time ago i read a whole article about pyramid architecture and it helped me a lot even in the creation of different kind of dungeon. Other time i just go with what make sense to me and will provide a challenge to the party.
When i need help i use some instrument like:
Are you designing it for publication? No? Then steal it!!
There are a ton of free maps on the Internet. Just go to Google and do an image search for "dungeons & dragons map". You should get a lot of examples. Just pick one and then adapt to your purposes.
There are also plenty of free modules out there. Some are for Pathfinder and could be found on this site. Download and adapt to suit your campaign.
For drawing maps, I like the blue old-school D&D maps from the 70s and 80s. I found a tutorial on how to make them here.
When making or adapting, try to think like he evil bad guy who owns it. If this was your dungeon, what would you like? Also try to make it logical. The dragon may look cool deep in the dungeon, but how did fit through the small tunnels to get there? What does it eat? Do they other creatures avoid it or serve it? Where do those creatures live? What do they eat?
ALso, what college class is it that teaches level design?
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I have been a GM for 13 years and my primary motive is hardcore roleplaying. Killing stuff and murdering you way through problems is not our style. We have solved major parts of campaigns with gold, the right way to talk and the real deals.
But of course. Combats and dungeons full of evil to defeat. They are there too. To explain how I design my dungeons, I will give you an example of one I have made and how.
I once GM'ed a campaign where the players where to find a secret and evil cult. They have followed their trails for long while other plots have crossed over and they know nothing about, who their next enemy is.
Their trails leads them to a swampy river and they sail it with 3 smalls boats in silence through the darkness. And then their trail learns them down a path with very difficult paths. And under big shattered rocks covered in moss and dead trees, they find a little tunnel that they sail through. They sail for some time and they are suddenly in a big open space. The water is still swampy and in the darkness around 400 feet away, stands the gigantic front of an underground dwarven fortress.
When you design something it has a history. To know it's present status, you need to know its past. This is essential to everything you make as a GM. NPC's, vilians, taverns ex.-
So this is a dwarven fortress. The first "enemies" they meet is ghosts and undeads of dwarfs and swampy animals. So they think this is a haunted place with completely random animals using the old fortress as a home. The enemies later on are undead orcs, constructs and magical traps. And first at the end they meet the cultists which is the plots real enemy. This point is great. If you make a dungeon with only one kind of enemies, it might turn into a boring dungeon with no history. It's just room after room after room of goblins.
When I make dungeons it takes long time. I don't sit down and make it from start to end. It is in small steps and I read alot to get inspiration, so I end up full of inspiration to make it perfect, nothing else is acceptable.
This dungeon is at this moment the home of a cult and random animals. The rest in there is simply their spells used to protect them. This is a great point! Are there enemies in YOUR dungeon? That could turn into friends of the players? In this dungeon there could be a barricaded corridor with alive dwarfs. Just to make an example. Are some of the bad guys guards loyal and would die for their goal? Or are they hired hands that works for the highest bidder? Or in this case - spells. The protection of the dungeon should never be alive things only. Include two very important things - environment and traps. In my dungeon there had been great wars beetween orcs and dwarves, which had led parts of the dungeon is great collapse with big environmentally threats.
At this point I have a dwarf fortress in my mind, not complete at all, I dont know many rooms yet. But I think. If I where a cult of evil bad guys, and I take a dwarven fortress as a headquater. What would I do with it? They planned to stay long. So a big religious temple is to be made. Where inside would they build this? After that, where would they sleep and work? What rooms would they use for that? And that way I went backwards and build the fortress from a point of - where are the cultist doin their stuff? When that is complete I have alot of rooms, build by the dwarves and overtaken by the cultists. Then there are alot of rooms left.
What else has happened? THE ORCS! The cult has not used the collapsed parts. And if the orcs came from the outside? Where were the battles fought? When I thought all theese thinks I had a lot of rooms comming into my mind.
Long corridors with big battles. Small maze like rooms with big doors barricaed and the fights moving from room to room. And in a matter of no time I have designed two big parts of the dungeon. 1. The cultists current headquaters. 2 a big part beetween the headquaters and the entrance - which is..... THE DUNGEON TO EXPLORE AND FIGHT THROUGH!
At this point I began to refine details.
1. Where do the animals live and what kind of encounter will they be? They was very territorial and defended their new home to the death.
2. The cultists, what do the eat and where do they put their waste and trash?
3. Is there a diffrence in the rooms? Is there architectural difference? Smells from workplace/tombs/corridor that has been empty and not used for generations/often used - include dust and clues of "this part is in use".. Could be a dropped cultist ring or animal poop.. Make your dungeon trustworthy and some parts to be alive when the party enters it. If they enter a stronghold and all the bad guys are designed in a "we just wait for you to come and kill us"-way it is boring and there is no "soul" in the dungeon.
4. Refine details of the dwarf rooms. Old hidden weapons, tombs, treasures, workplaces, beds.
5. The outside. Places from inside where the dwarves could shoot out and have scouts.
After this, all the solid parts of the dungeon is complete. Now to the events. What will happend when and where?
What status will the cultist be in, when there is combat here and here. If they spot the party and knows they are under siege - what do they do?
If they get sneaked out one by one and the party uses disguise and tricks to get in - what are the cultist doin then? My players was level 13 so they had many abilities and they used spells to sneak in and scry. They overhead a big ritual, meetings with the cultists and other cultist stuff.
They spyed on the cultist for 2 weeks before they slaughtered them all one by one in a big tactical plot.
But what about your dungeon? And ofc, your players? Will they charge in and get spotted and just fight from room to room - draw back and rest, and come back the next day to carry on?
I hope this was a help.
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@gutnedawg: My group usually loves simple straight forward stuff. The only time they like to twist their minds is when I throw puzzles at them which they indeed greatly love. I have to agree though sometimes I do make dungeons a bit more difficult then what my party can handle which drags games on. The amount encounters per dungeon always throws me a bit off.
@Trinite: As much as stealing would save me time and I have no shame of doing when prep. time is short, I do wish to improve as an individual GM. I've have use old dungeon maps before and filled them with my own work. It's a big time saver during exam times that's for sure ;P
Still... The funnest part of DMing is building a world fill with your own imagination and hard work and then seeing your players travel through it. Last week I ran my first successful dungeon that my player's heavily praise me for and I was filled with pride about my work. I want to try to improve myself so I can feel proud about what 'I' accomplish even if my player's would never know the difference between a pre-made map and my own. It's a self accomplishment goal and I'm sure you understand :)
@eleclipse: Actually speaking about pyramids I've been looking for information about them as my player's are approaching one soon. I would be nice to have some idea of how they were actually design. Would you mind sharing?
@darth borehd: Same reason as Trinite as why I would like to learn myself ;)
Still that tutorial for old school maps brings me back when I first found my father's D&D modules in a box. Those maps were what that got me into the game in the first place. Thank you so much for sharing the tutorial!
Also for your question I'm currently studying Game Development. Level Design is a 2nd year course we take for two semesters.
@Saganen Hellheart: Wow thank you so much Saganen! This is precisely what I've needed! Your help was both inspiring and useful and I will definitely keep your example in mind when I develop my own dungeons. Thank you :)
