DM Advice - Writing a Dungeon Crawl

[WithoutHisFoot]

I haven't written a proper dungeon crawl in years. Lately I've been doing mostly event-based style games. I'd like to send them into a large dungeon now, before they're too high level to trivialize or bypass most of the traditional dungeon elements. However, since it's been so long since I've done one (and I wasn't particularly good at it even then), I could use some advice.

-What are your favorite or most successful dungeon elements?
-How do you plan and gauge the length of your dungeon?
-How do you ensure that the dungeon is challenging for a large party? (mine is eight players!)
-Are there any exemplary dungeon crawls that you can point me to for inspiration?

If it helps to know the setup:

setup:

This dungeon is built beneath a major city, in the undercity (you know the trope - a city built on the bones of older cities). It was built by the church of the sun god as a prison/vault to hold a powerful vampire lord and the faithful that had been turned by the vampire. In particular, a group of church followers had attempted to destroy the vampire lord, but were unsuccessful and were turned. When their hunger is sated, they are still faithful. My thinking is that, unable to cure them, the high priest of the time built a prison to hold them. The vampire lord is also protecting a key that the PCs need for the main storyline. I currently haven't decided if he is there willingly or not. This prison/vault/dungeon was built about 8 centuries ago.

Any ideas or advice are much appreciated.

[the David]

- Keep things fresh. Nobody likes repetitive encounters, so come up with a bunch of unique encounters with diferent tactics.
- You could go by the number of encounters you want to use or the amount of xp the players need before the next adventure.
- Make good use of large rooms. Your 8 players will have great difficulty fighting in 5 ft. wide hallways.
- I think someone blogged about a five room dungeon theory. It might help.

As for your setup, it seems a little weak. Vampires need blood on a regular basis (at least according to one book published by Paizo, though it's probably setting specific.) and it's generally better to imprison vampires inside a glass prison, on a city square, in direct sunlight. Staking them to death is also good and seems easier than imprisoning a vampire.

[Flamephoenix182]

Extra Credits did a series of video's on Durlag's Tower from Baldur's gate. It is a video game but they go over the principles of good dungeon design, I feel it is very applicable to pathfinder dungeon crawls as well as general guidelines:

Durlag's Tower.

Seconded the 5 room dungeon. It is a good way to make a short dungeon crawl, that has all the elements. Just need to be creative with what you define as rooms

5 Room Dungeon

[Irontruth]

Even if you want to do a bigger dungeon, the 5-room dungeon is still useful. It can be used to either create subsections of the dungeon, or creating the most important rooms. It also helps you plan out the session. The 5 rooms should take roughly 2-4 hours to play through, depending on what you plan and how fast your group moves through things.

[justaworm]

OP wrote:

What are your favorite or most successful dungeon elements?

- One of my favorites is when the loot also functions as the hazards.

- I also have to second not making overly large, complex dungeons that are tedious/monotonous.

[Eltacolibre]

Avoid empty rooms, it's annoying and boring. At least make the room somewhat colorful or have some history related to the dungeon.

[Broken Zenith]

If I can plug myself for a second here: Check out Jacob's Tower (it's free), particularly the Gothic level. Also, check out the Top 12 Tips for Writing Adventures.

You'll find both very helpful.

[Ascalaphus]

Normally a 5-room dungeon is nice, but it's not the only way to do things. I think your current situation calls for something bigger.

Let's start with the premise: a vampire undercity prison.

Prison immediately raises the question: why not kill the vampire lord? The obvious answer is "because he's too powerful", but that just raises the question "then how come they managed to imprison him?" - imprisoning someone for centuries is usually much harder than just killing them. And vampires are pretty hard to contain, what with turning gaseous or Dominating prison guards if they make even a single mistake.

So we need some interesting answers to that.

One option would be to make this a sort of "biohazard containment" scenario, where the old city has been hermetically sealed behind several layers, and the players are going in there, against all warning, knowing full well that no good can come of opening up an ancient prison. You can mix medieval undercity with Black Mesa vibes here. A really neat way to do it would be to gradually have the players realize that the vampires set the whole thing up to lure them in, so that the players would disable the defenses from the outside. Then it turns into a race to prevent vampires from escaping while the PCs are suddenly on the receiving end of all the defenses.

Another "why are they here" answer would be that the vampires aren't strictly imprisoned, but that they're quite content to stay down there. Maybe an ancient hero brokered a deal with the vampire lord, to stay down there and fulfill a duty, and in return he'd get a monthly stipend of blood donors for him and his brood. His job might be to guard the prison of something else - a bound demon for example. As an undead he'd be relatively immune to mind-affecting blandishments, and have the long-term view to take up this duty for centuries; for the proper pay.

That second option then gives you a real "city" dungeon: the vampire lord himself has political immunity, players are supposed to negotiate with him. But to get to see him they have to get through the city, and the lesser vampires smell opportunity. There's only so much blood to go around (with the church stipend - one of the church's dirtiest secrets!), so no vampire is allowed to sire more offspring until another one "makes room". But their Father forbids direct attacks. So when the PCs come in, the vampires try to convince them to kill their rivals.

All that happens among underground libraries, theaters and craftshops. Mortals sentenced to go down below aren't always immediately eaten; the vampires need servants too. By now they may have even gotten a permanent servitor population, that's grown weird and inhuman from lack of sunlight (morlocks). And maybe the morlock slaves are thinking of rebellion.

[WithoutHisFoot]

justaworm wrote:

One of my favorites is when the loot also functions as the hazards.

Can you give an example? I'm assuming you mean something more than a cursed ring or something.

I've been playing with some ideas for fixing up the premise. theDavid has correctly called out that the premise is weak as initially presented - there needs to be a reason the church would imprison rather than simply kill the vampires. Ascalaphus, you had some interesting ideas here. In particular I like the idea that the church secretly sends blood down to the vault, possibly in the form of criminals and political prisoners. I'll need to give some thought to your other suggestions, but there is definitely promise here.

The PC's main goal is to retrieve the key that the vampire lord is protecting, so this could also give him a reason to submit to the vault. Perhaps he felt this church vault could be a secure place to protect this key. This seems somewhat sinister as well - it could be that he turns the church followers in order to force them to build the prison in the first place.

Regardless, the setup and theme is only half the battle. Are there any published dungeons folks can recommend I go look at for ideas? Jacob's Tower was worth looking at. I'd imagine there are others.

[Pizza Lord]

WithoutHisFoot wrote:

justaworm wrote:

One of my favorites is when the loot also functions as the hazards.

Can you give an example? I'm assuming you mean something more than a cursed ring or something.

The adventure Deadly Treasure involved a wizard who didn't want his tomb to be plundered by adventurers with a few cheesy traps and all his worldly belongings in one big room at the end, so he used most of his treasure as part of the dungeon's defenses to make sure he was remembered and basically when he died, magical messages were sent to the nearby villages inviting people to try and break through.

The first one was that the entrance to his tomb was a shallow well with a small hatch at the bottom that could only be opened with great effort and strength. If that happened though, all the water fell through it and the first room was an earthen floor with his bag of beans planted in it. So unless people had drained the well, all the beans sprouted (I believe those were basically a rod of wonder-type items, with the beans having random magical effects; you would typically plant one bean at a time) this pretty much set off poisonous gas clouds and earthquakes or summoned monsters, grew a beanstalk from the floor up through the well, etc. In other words, it was a magical treasure the PCs used up.

Then in a dark room (back then you could layer continual darkness spells to prevent a single continual light from overcoming them) he placed his portable hole across the entrance to the normal corridor (it was an extra deep one) so people walking into it didn't realize they were inside it until the reached the 'bottom'. Then it just felt like a layer of canvas or fabric across it and, if they cut it, it caused a rupture which was a bad thing back then, basically flinging them into other planes. It also worked great for character wearing bags of holding or other extra/nondimensional gear, as placing those inside a portable hole also caused bad things.

Then he had a split, where if you went west you ran into a gargoyle or imp using his (Daern's) instant fortress, basically grew it and blocked the passage with the door on the other side and fired magic missiles from the wizard's [i]wand of magic missiles until the PCs destroyed the tower or the wand was dead (using up the treasure, which was the point).

If the went the other way, the encounter the wizard's decanter of endless water sitting in a small divot in a narrow passage and just geysering up. If they tried to get close or pass it, an imp on that side used a cube of force to trap inside where the decanter basically started filling the cube. The adventure said it took 3 rounds, but later it was errata'd to take much, much longer. If the PC's tried to move the decanter, it basically shot around like a missile, ricocheting around and damaging them every round.

As for your dungeon, maybe part of the 'imprisoning' effect isn't the physical dungeon, but the Sun God's ward or something that doesn't stop vampires from leaving, but maybe misting out or somesuch. So while they can do that inside, they can't just float out through cracks, and rat holes. They have to use doors or dig like everyone else. The first few encounters and rooms should actually be designed to keep people out. Made by the church to ensure those entering are prepared or pious. Religious tests, doors that require a set amount of channeling positive energy into them to open. Basically trials that ensure someone is either prepared to face undead or a member of the clergy. Then you reach the rooms with walls of fire, sun-light traps, etc.

[WithoutHisFoot]

Sounds like a dungeon to make players tear their hair out. Entertaining, but I wouldn't use that technique often.

Good ideas about the religious wards/tests. Outer layers to keep people out, inner layers to keep the vampires in. Innermost regions where the vampires have free reign.

[Dastis]

Perhaps the vampires are not trapped. The clergy is under his power and regularly sends adventurers down there as "tribute"

[Ascalaphus]

The whole thing lends itself well to a Dan Brown "the Vatican has secrets" kind of feel.

[DoubleBubble]

How I normally for Dungeon Crawl. I prefer to have them go up a tower, it's almost leads to perfect ending all the time when your players reach top level. Even the scene of them reached the top and look down across the land could be very epic on its own. So for your prison, of course you would like it to go down. But it doesn't hurt if you ever want to switch it up.

I try to set it up so you have exploring, one quick combat, and some skill checks for one session. Where players can test out their abilities and learn about the boss in this level. Gather some items for future needs and learn the story about the tower. This way you can satisfy almost everyone in the group.

Next session will be boss fight, loots and going up. Boss fight doesn't always happen at the end of the level, sometime players might want to ambush the boss. Sometime they want to sneak pass the boss. You give them options and the time to do what they want, let their plans entertain you. Have some twist or lore at the end of the level. When they go up, give them a shop of some NPC to roleplay with before opening the door to on the next level, describe what they see when they open the door to next level always leaves you a good cliff hanger.

To ensure the encounters are challenging for a large group, use large number or tactics. That is always true when you want to challenge your players. More units, more thinking. Also if you throw big bad, throw one that will change form once they took enough damage from one source. Say you have a big bad that has 200 hp, it might only take half magical/physical damage, or even immunity. Could be a caster going raging and melee everyone after his took a big hit. Or a boss turns undead after being killed. This gives everyone in the party to feel special. But don't do it based one who performed the best or who got the most spotlight. Always, always based on the theme of that level. Use the level to foreshadowing what will happen so the players are informed with what they might have to face. It could turn out to be something different, but if you do that, leave them something they can use to overcome those encounters.

[Lady-J]

blind fold yourself and try to draw out a rough estimate of the dungeon then take off the blind fold and make turn it into something functional that way each dungeon you make will be unique and interesting while also not having to stress yourself about it all to much