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Dungeons & Dragons	-	Dragon magazine		The Dragon #10

WHEN DESIGNING A DUNGEON; before you begin madly
scattering chutes, monsters, and secret doors, take a moment to figure
out what it’s all for. If you are postulating a world with any sort of
“realizm” at all, you must appreciate that a dungeon doesn’t just come
into being for the hell of it. To the peoples of your world, digging a
dungeon out of solid rock is a tremendous task, one not to be undertaken
lightly.

With some rare exceptions, the dungeons which a player
encounters have been abandoned by organized society. However, it
required an organized society to build them in the first place. You, as
the designer, must think like the builders when you design a dungeon,
and allow for all of the necessary functions of the dungeon.

Don’t be concerned that the players entering your organized
dungeon will have too few difficulties in traversing it. Any D&D player
quickly develops the suspicious mind and almost paranoiac attitude
necessary for survival. His fears, coupled with his general lack of information
about your dungeon, will make your dungeon far more
mysterious than you would ever believe.

If organization and detail seem like too much extra work for you,
then relax. It won’t take you any longer to create a dungeon this way,
and in fact it will probably be faster, due to the benefits of being
organized, knowing exactly what each area is for and why it is there.
The time you spend in initial planning is cancelled out when you set up
the individual levels, because you don’t spend ten or fifteen idle
moments wondering what to do with the next level. You already know!
Using the basic ideas I’m about to describe, I have created a ten level
cave-dungeon complex, complete with maps, monsters, treasures, and
legends in only seven hours time.

Before you do anything with a dungeon, you should have specified
where it will be located, what the surface area looks like, and what, in
capsule form, its history is. The two chief items of the history are its
age and who built it. Age is important, expecially time elapsed since it
was last in regular use, because it determines the condition of any
perishable items found within, and for some worlds, what sort of artifacts
could be present. The builder, that is, the being who caused the
castle dungeon to be built, is the single most important factor to develop
before actually working on the dungeons.

The builder’s occupation, social standing, alignment, and personality
will decree a great number of levels just for his own personal use.
These are levels with specific functions which are unique to his type of
character. Give the builder’s character a few personal tendencies, such
as being sneaky, grandiose, austere, or a hater of straight lines, and you
have a blueprint of what to put in your levels and, better still, a pattern
on how they should look.

Again I say relax! Players entering your dungeon will not soon, if
ever, perceive this pattern. First of all, players usually are prone to not
seeing the forest for the trees, and secondly the rooms are no longer
used for what they were intended. Here’s an example of what I mean:
take a walk down a street which still has a number of store buildings
standing which antedate 1910. Look at them closely. Then without asking
anyone or looking it up somewhere, figure out what each of them
was for. How many did you get right? Now try it in pitch darkness by
torchlight, with monsters around, and without any little tell-tale signs
like railroad tracks, truck sized doors,or distinctive shape on something
four centuries old instead of a mere three generations . . . They’ll
never guess, either.

On a smaller scale, hero Dancing Bear and his motley crew come
across a rotting wood door reposing on the floor in front of an empty
doorway. Through the doorway they see a 10’ x 10’ room with small
bits of rotting wood, intermixed with glass and metal, on the floor to
the left, a rusted iron ring on the back wall, and a larger pile of rotting
wood on the floor to the right. In the far right corner is a dark stain on
walls and floor, except for a lighter patch on part of the floor. Much
dust and small skeletons. What was this room used for? You don’t
know!!! (Heh, heh)

You, as the builder, know perfectly well. The ring on the wall is a
doorhandle, leading to several cells beyond. The junk to the left is the
remains of a few flails of the cat-of-nine-tails variety, which had wood
handles and leather flail straps, in which were imbedded jagged bits of
metal and broken glass. The metal and glass remain, the wood is rotting
away, the leather straps were gnawed away by rodents, and the
cloth bags tacked on the wall which held them are long since dust. The
debris on the right was once the desk and chair of grizzled old Sergeant
Lumbago, the warden of this cell block, whose habit of spitting tobacco
juice at his battered and long lost cuspidor (it was buried with him as
an act of sanitation) has forever marked the corner where it sat, now
marked only by a lighter area amid the constant storm of his expectoration.
Either you or old Lumbago could have told the esteemed Dancing
Bear that there was nothing behind the semi-secret door but skeletons
and perhaps the undead, but he will just have to find out for himself.

Keep it simple and stick to a plan! They won’t know what you’ve
done! What looks so obvious to you on paper is the deepest of forbidden
mysteries to everyone else. Dungeons take time enough to create,
so don’t overdo them. Make it easy on yourself.

Now let us consider the planning of the actual dungeon. I am
postulating a castle on a small hill, deep within a forest. About a
thousand years ago, a local tribe erected crude stone fortifications here
for their women and children. The site was in use for a few centuries
and then abandoned. About four hundred years ago, a young, energetic
wizard named Nappo claimed the site. He brought in a few hundred
orcs and built the present castle on the old foundations, expanding outward
and downward. The orcs were put to work creating a dungeon
complex, which project continued of and on until Nappo’s death.
Assisted by magic, Nappo lived there for 120 years. In the 275 years
since Nappo died, his orcs have continued to inhabit the place, greatly
hindered by the various monsters on which Nappo loved to experiment.
Their numbers are much reduced, and the castle is now a backwater
area.

Now for the drawing board, The builder, Nappo, was a wizard, so
at least one level is needed for labs, libraries, and storage of related
equipment. Nappo experimented on monsters, so space is needed for
further laboratories, cages of all sizes, food storage for the beasts, and
all relevant sundry items. (Always allow for storage rooms in your
levels, it was a long hike to the surface!)

The upper levels should have living space for several hundred orcs,
with attendant storage, kitchens, perhaps temple space, and maybe
even sewers or some system for waste removal. Rotten food and excrement
might have been simply heaved down some convenient underground
crevasse, which some unlucky player might fall into. These
levels would be connected by fairly wide ramps, as defense dictates that
the orc soldiers must be able to reach the surface quickly.

Here also would be the main armory, with its own guardroom or
other security precautions, plus fairly easy access to drinking water.

Leading off in a separate series of levels would be Nappo’s part of
the dungeons. First, a number of levels devoted to guardrooms, mazes,
and traps to snare intruders. Then would come Nappo’s underground
quarters, from which one would gain access to labs, animal or monster
pens, and Nappo’s treasury. This entire series would be interconnected
by narrow stairways, as it is unlikely that anything bulky would ever be
carried in here. Remember that dungeon excavation is very laborious,
and where it was unnecessary it was not done.

The entire dungeon complex would probably not have more than
fifteen separate levels, plus a few stray corridors leading nowhere, intended
for further levels which were not completed due to Nappo’s
death. None of the levels would be more than eight levels below the surface.

So, now we have a general purpose for each and every level and we
haven’t marked up a single sheet of graph paper! All this was ac-complished
with only a few basic assumptions carried to their most basic
conclusions. We are now ready to do some sketching.

The next step is to draw up two views of the dungeons as a whole,
one a vertical cutaway and the other a horizontal overlay. This gives
you the continuity between levels, and with a little simple geometry you
can even measure the length of a sloping passage with precision. The indifidual
levels on these drawings should be represented by rectangles
showing their extreme boundaries, and both drawings must, of course,
be to scale. I would recommend 200 feet to the inch, or whatever scale
allows you to fit everything on one sheet of paper. Now fill in all of
your connecting halls, stairs, and so forth, and finish up these two
drawings by writing in the main purpose of theme of each level within
the corresponding rectangle. Viola! Instant dungeon!

You have now completed all the necessary preforations for
creating your dungeon. You have already determined the size of each
level, the general contents of each level, and the location of all exits and
entrances to every one. Now all you have to do is find room for everything
that needs to be in each particular level and just fill in the dots, as
deviously, as you wish!

So much for the basics. Nappo’s dig was rather elementary, as it
was merely an illustration. He was only given three personality facets;
being an MU, being fond of animal experimentation, and needing
space for his orcs. These alone generated fifteen levels, and assumed
him to be both celibate and a recluse. The more a builder is developed,
the more rich and varied his dungeons.

Many traits of character can find expression in additional dungeon
levels. Did he have frequent visitors? Add guest rooms with corridors,
plus secret passages for the builder to spy on them. Also add another
water source. Did his visitors travel alone? Not likely, unless the visitor
was Gandalf. You’ll need space for their retinues.

Was the builder a temporal ruler? Add throne room, conference
rooms, guard rooms, more secret passages, and perhaps a regalia room
where Count von Bombast donned his robes of state. Also rooms for
visiting dignitaries and their retinues, secret passages for von Bombast’s
spies and assassins, secret rooms in which von Bombast conferred
with his spies, and a chamber or two for the dignitaries to cool their
heels in, while von Bombast gets settled in his gilded chair.

A gourmet requires extensive kitchens and pantries, along with a
host of attendant small rooms. Kitchens are fun. They can possess any
number of mysterious sights, sounds, and smells, not to mention
hungry beasts. For one thing, ovens must be vented to the surface to
avoide baking the cooks. The vents can let in water, light, and above
all, air. The vents will act like an empty pop bottle does when you blow
across the top. Depending on the wind outside, the vents will produce
an all-pervading sound from a low hum that will make your bones
vibrate to a continuous piercing shriek that numbs mind and ears.
Spilled spices may smell like the burning of priestly incense, while
simultaneously the wind noice from the vent may resemble a Gregorian
chant. Your poor, misquided adventurer may think he is on the verge
of disturbing the summoning of Demogorgon, when in fact someone
threw a lit torch down the vent where it landed in a sack or oregano,
while on the surface a moderate breeze has sprung up. How prosaic,
but how utterly terrifying to the few swordsmen underground, alone
with their fears.

One of the more common traits among people of power has always
been a predilection for a varied sex life. In European history, ruling
men created comfortable nests for their lovers, which were as lavish as
the men pleased or could afford. European women, such as Catherine
the Great or Lucretia Borgia, did not have the same options, but they
could appoint their lovers to their personal guard. The lovers would
thus gain enough money and prestige to make themselves quite comfortable.
Doubtless Cleopatra had other means at her disposal, but information
is regrettably scarce. Use your imagination. A D&D world does
not have to be similar to Europe, as Dr. Barker has shown us so well.

As a final thought, if you want a really well-fleshed dungeon,
throw in the religious element. In the entire history of mankind, only
shelter has caused more construction than religion. Also, religious
organizations tend to be well-heeled enough to build with impunity

A main temple can easily be a level by itself. You can have separate
rooms for rituals, artifacts, treasuries, vestments, confessionals, sacrifices,
meditation, scrivening, instruction, administration, punishment,
smaller chapels, and chapels for the worship of each god in a whole
pantheon. There can be special rooms for memorials, christenings,
burials, marriages, exorcism, penitence, fasting, and so on ad
infinitum. Libraries full of scrolls! Secure rooms for summoning! Just
the living quarters can be endless!

These are just a few ideas to help you put together a dungeon, and
they are intended to take out some of the more fatiguing side effects of
design. I know that creating dungeons had become a tedious task for
me until I hit upon this systematic approach. I am certainly not saying
that every dungeon should be full planned out. A builder might be completely
mad or might delight in total disorganization, in which case a
systematic approach is inappropriate. The idea is that it should be fun
to design a dungeon, not a chore. Try a more organized approach, and
enjoy yourself!