Ok, so I have been DMing for YEARS. But one thing I feel I never did correctly is DMing a dungeon. I just haven't seemed to be able to get a fluid way of doing it and it just seems to take forever. My current style is that they get to a room, I describe the room or show them on a map. But, I have them move little by little and not just show them the whole map, as I feel this is not the best way to do things.
I am just trying to get some feedback from folks on how they DM dungeons because I know they can be fun, but I am trying to get rid of the "dungeon crawl" feel that seems to just drag and drag.
If you want to run a dungeon quickly, I'd cut out describing the room to the bare minimum they need to know for rooms that don't have a significant mechanic, trap, etc. to them.
You can get it down to something like "The next room is 30 feet by 60 feet, and on the other end, you see 3 skeletons. Roll initiative." If there isn't anything else to that room and you just want to get it quickly, you don't need to describe the material of the room, the lighting, etc. As long as the players know the bare bones to understand what is going on, they are good.
For the map, unless you are drawing it out on the battle map (or if the location is important mechanically in some way), I would advise again you don't show it. Just give the players what they absolutely need to know, and run with it.
If you ARE using a battle map, don't draw out a particular room across the entire room (unless it is either massive or has multiple mechanically important features). If you cut some space, you can draw multiple rooms in succession and just mark where the doors are when players enter a new room. This cuts the time of erasing and then re-drawing rooms over and over.
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Ok, so I have been DMing for YEARS. But one thing I feel I never did correctly is DMing a dungeon. I just haven't seemed to be able to get a fluid way of doing it and it just seems to take forever. My current style is that they get to a room, I describe the room or show them on a map. But, I have them move little by little and not just show them the whole map, as I feel this is not the best way to do things.
I am just trying to get some feedback from folks on how they DM dungeons because I know they can be fun, but I am trying to get rid of the "dungeon crawl" feel that seems to just drag and drag.
If you want to run a dungeon quickly, I'd cut out describing the room to the bare minimum they need to know for rooms that don't have a significant mechanic, trap, etc. to them.
You can get it down to something like "The next room is 30 feet by 60 feet, and on the other end, you see 3 skeletons. Roll initiative." If there isn't anything else to that room and you just want to get it quickly, you don't need to describe the material of the room, the lighting, etc. As long as the players know the bare bones to understand what is going on, they are good.
For the map, unless you are drawing it out on the battle map (or if the location is important mechanically in some way), I would advise again you don't show it. Just give the players what they absolutely need to know, and run with it.
If you ARE using a battle map, don't draw out a particular room across the entire room (unless it is either massive or has multiple mechanically important features). If you cut some space, you can draw multiple rooms in succession and just mark where the doors are when players enter a new room. This cuts the time of erasing and then re-drawing rooms over and over.