Hey guys! I'm currently building a dwarves-themes dungeon beneath a snowy mountain that should lead to a big confrontation with a shadow demi-god in the end.. but well, the truth is, I find dungeons pretty boring as a DM. 

Well, in the end, it's probably just me being uncreative with the dungeon rooms and traps - well, what is your favourite dungeon trap/room/detail/etc. to pull on your players as a DM? Or do you have an exceptional idea on something I could put in the dungeon I'm currently making?

Thanks in advance :))

I think dungeons can get a little stale when you end up essentially describing similar rooms, that lead to other similar rooms, that essentially just serve as narrative fodder for the trap / encounter / treasure horde. You need to think of ways to bring your dungeon itself vividly to life before all the encounters etc, and then add those bits on top.

Over the years, I've tried a few different approaches to presenting dungeons. From nothing visual, leaving it purely to the imagination, to having a detailed map that is slowly revealed. But my favourite - and the approach that gets the most enjoyment and engagement from players - is to go for a modular 'tiled' approach - here's an example:  

This is a small dungeon I created for a low level party. Each room is a separate piece; so players don't know what's coming up, how big the dungeon is, or anything of that nature. It's great to see the dungeon being built out as they explore - to watch them deliberate which door to choose and excited to see what it opens up. Finding secret passageways, and seeing how it connects to other parts of the dungeon, that sort of thing. It takes a little time to put together, but it makes exploration very immersive.

In this dungeon, the section on the right was the basement of an old ruined watchtower, taken by bandits. If they discover a secret tunnel behind a tapestry, it leads them deep underground to an ancient temple via a dark tunnel, past a deep pool of water. The great thing about this modular approach, is that once they'd cleared the final area - the temple had changed behind them. Getting out again was an even longer and more perilous adventure than getting in. Keeping players guessing like that keeps them on their toes, keeps them on edge, and keeps them engaged.

It also allows for some creativity too. You can mix up rooms on the fly, if you decide you want the players to encounter a different room, or particular trap to overcome - or if they've somehow bee-lined directly for the end of the dungeon through sheer luck - then you can swap it. 

One thing you can do to spice up your dungeon is to use the dungeon itself to tell a story.

On a meta-gaming level, Dungeons are created by the DM for the sole purpose of the adventuring party.

On an "in world" level, Dungeons were ( or are ) places that have ( or had ) their own purpose, and have their own history - and that history can be a mystery to the party, something that they have to unravel to understand.

To keep the history relevant, and the party interested, make it so that accessing certain areas, or certain treasure, needs an understanding of parts of that history - so that the party learns that they need to understand the story of the place, and that it benefits them greatly to do so.

This means that there should be multiple clues to understanding bits of the place's history that are needed to get into story-critical areas; never hide all the clues behind skill rolls that the party could fail. For areas which are optional, feel free to make it so the party can fail to get into that area. Understanding the history, or paying attention to the clues about the lives of the people that used to be here, can also give the party resources and access to routes which allow them to bypass very dangerous areas. Optional areas can also hold very special or lucrative loot. You can also add parts of the story of the place that are pure lore, or fluff, or story interest.

Also - you understanding what this place used to be makes it easier to write. This was a lost mine - that's one kind of dungeon. A lost Dwarven stronghold - that's another. A remote and ruined temple complex - there's another.

Figure out what this place was, what it is now, how it transitioned from one to the other, and make knowing that narrative advantageous to exploring this place, and it should not only be easier for you to write, but more engaging for your players to explore.

On the topic of traps, ask yourself what the trap is supposed to accomplish. That may help you out tremendously in designing the trap and how it works. Here's a few examples I've used:

• A mage has a trapped safe in his study where he keeps an important magical item. Obviously, it's meant to keep unwelcome people out, but it's also something that he has to be able to reasonably disable every time he wants to get something out of the safe and he has to be able to reasonably enable it when he puts something in it. With that in mind, I made a trap that the mage could operate by himself using skills and magic he would have easy access to.
• An old defiled temple had many undead inhabitants in it. There was a pressure plate trap that released poison gas into the corridor. Undead are immune to poison, so the creator of the trap knew that it very well might be a problem for whomever sprung the trap, but she also knew it would be no problem for the undead creatures who would enter the poison gas cloud.

Quote from Chequers >>

I think dungeons can get a little stale when you end up essentially describing similar rooms, that lead to other similar rooms, that essentially just serve as narrative fodder for the trap / encounter / treasure horde. You need to think of ways to bring your dungeon itself vividly to life before all the encounters etc, and then add those bits on top.

Over the years, I've tried a few different approaches to presenting dungeons. From nothing visual, leaving it purely to the imagination, to having a detailed map that is slowly revealed. But my favourite - and the approach that gets the most enjoyment and engagement from players - is to go for a modular 'tiled' approach - here's an example:  

This is a small dungeon I created for a low level party. Each room is a separate piece; so players don't know what's coming up, how big the dungeon is, or anything of that nature. It's great to see the dungeon being built out as they explore - to watch them deliberate which door to choose and excited to see what it opens up. Finding secret passageways, and seeing how it connects to other parts of the dungeon, that sort of thing. It takes a little time to put together, but it makes exploration very immersive.

In this dungeon, the section on the right was the basement of an old ruined watchtower, taken by bandits. If they discover a secret tunnel behind a tapestry, it leads them deep underground to an ancient temple via a dark tunnel, past a deep pool of water. The great thing about this modular approach, is that once they'd cleared the final area - the temple had changed behind them. Getting out again was an even longer and more perilous adventure than getting in. Keeping players guessing like that keeps them on their toes, keeps them on edge, and keeps them engaged.

It also allows for some creativity too. You can mix up rooms on the fly, if you decide you want the players to encounter a different room, or particular trap to overcome - or if they've somehow bee-lined directly for the end of the dungeon through sheer luck - then you can swap it. 

 

 I think this is a great idea! I'm just having some problems using it to it's fullest, as we play online ;)

But I will try to make everything connect in some way, if it will the players an immersive experience!

For tabletop games, I draw out some basic features, and use minis and tokens (not on actual battle maps), to represent approximate party and monster formations and movements, and describe the rest in detail. In online games, I use all descriptive theater. I'll often use some grid paper to just to keep focus on estimated movements while i'm narrating.

But each time I come to the next player in the initiative, I give a quick recount of the situation, where everyone's at and what they're seeing in front and to the sides of them. It's never been an issue in my games and it's fun narrating description instead of just nodding to a map and going, "Dave, it's your turn. What does [insert cheesy name here] do?

In relation to the original context of the OP, I run a lot of topside encounters. As much as dungeons are fun for me, topside/outdoor adventures give so much flexibility and options. You have daylight/night, weather conditions are never static, temp changes can be naturally drastic and detrimental, terrain options for days, etc

Define dungeon... 
--It can be a simple tomb with a few corridors filled with traps. A small straight forward corridor with braziers, mosaic reliefs on the walls that hide buttons among them. Players might lean and press to activate the braziers and fire them up. Behind the braziers tiles slide open which, at set intervals, blow a gust of oil...creating flamethrowers. Pressure tiles with darts. A trapped room that functions as a giant puzzle with team work.
--Could be a straight up ruin where players delve through 2 or 3 floors of an old crumbled/abandoned structure. One with its own history and function. Giving you information what its purpose once was and thus letting you create rooms that make sense. Bed Rooms, Banquet Halls, Libraries or whatever else would fit with the original structure's function.
--It could be some hidden facility carved into a mountain. Where you have a "docking bay" where goods come in and go. A market place located nearby. Then a floor that is so high and open that it contains a small village.
--Or a mega dungeon with entire eco systems of its own. Cities and civilizations that grew here. Portals to other plains.

You can make dungeons as interesting as any outside environment. I've used them as side content to tell the history of civilizations long gone. Finding old relics that would be interesting to a collector/historian.

Last weekend ran more a re-flavored dwarven mountain settlement. Turned it into a sci-fi fantasy horror theme. With a floor for the "administration" where some doppelganger/changelings were holed up accompanied with Displacer beasts. Further down some hatchery guarded by a Behir. Leading to some puzzling trap rooms. A mindflayer with Otyughs and Animated Armors as a boss fight. Usually I have drawn out maps and project them with a beamer on the wall. In this one-shot I just had a large piece of graph paper so everyone knew how they were positioned. Everything else was just theater of the mind except for 3 of the 8 encounters. For those I had drawn a room on graph paper.

It ain't pretty, but here's how I did my massive cavern dungeon map this weekend.

Forget the dungeon map. My attention is on the Shiner, and it's making me thirsty

i use a sheet of graph like that one which is covered in plastic, then i just draw a rough outline with drywipe marker, then wipe it off as you move along