1. entrance guardian, such as gargoyles on a bridge, or the undead remains of a former knight.
2. A couple of "Feature" rooms, that are very iconic dungeon elements, like that one room with the giant spider, or an unstable room, or an actual dungeon.
3. Don't have monsters/traps/puzzles in every room, but always include something interesting. If i'm playing, I dont want to constantly be hindered by challenges 24/7, i want to see cool stuff in a fantasy adventure (and kill things, there needs to be some challenge)!
4. Don't be afraid to go old school, and on a related note, use old school design philosophy, the adventure isn't a story, it's a framework to build a story in! In all the sessions that I had a really good time as a player, the story never took the intended route, instead of fighting, we disguised ourselves as enemies, and used our knowledge of them to bluff our way past guards, while I sneaked off to do recon. Or that time when I gandalfed some half-ogres (minor illusion so I sounded like a half-ogre, made the ogres argue till they fought each other).
5. Dungeons are places to explore, and there should be plenty of things that make it feel special, even if it's just a strange fungus farm on one of the walls.
Dungeons are places with an original purpose, a current purpose, a story, and a history - not just a random accumulation of rooms. They are places, with stories.
The Dwarven mining settlement becomes a home for creatures of the Underdark, and there is a story of its fall - that story being encoded in the rooms and artifacts of the dungeon, some of the wreckage, what is ruined and how, itself.
Once you know the story of the Dungeon, the design can largely write it'self.
The layout of the Dungeon is set by it's original purpose: a Dwarven mine, a lost temple, an abandoned village, a hidden tomb - these will all be very different.
Creating the changes and damage of the Dungeon's evolving history, that's where the DM can get really creative. Designing clues to tell the Explorers what happened here, in a realistic and interesting way is also a lot of fun ( wall inscriptions, lost fragments of scrolls, body or skeleton placement that seems random until you have deciphered who this was, and what they were trying to do, etc. ). Using these clues to create trails to optional areas of the Dungeon can also be very effective. Maybe the greedy Dwarven paymaster wrote about needing to hide the mine's payroll as there was fighting breaking out in the lower mines. Then the Party finds a skeleton, of a Dwarf in one of the side tunnels, killed by a cave in, whose belt buckle is the Family crest of the Paymaster's House. An astute Party who read the Paymaster's diary, and can recognize the crest ( I may have a seal, or other artifact in their office with that same crest ), might start searching near the skeleton to try and find the missing payroll. Parties who didn't investigate? Well, they'll probably miss out on the loot.
In short, coming up with the purposes of the Dungeon - both original and current - and sketching out how it got from it's former purpose to the latter, can make the job of creating your Dungeon a lot less work - and you can focus your creative energies on creating interesting clues and trails for your Party to follow, within it.
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1. entrance guardian, such as gargoyles on a bridge, or the undead remains of a former knight.
2. A couple of "Feature" rooms, that are very iconic dungeon elements, like that one room with the giant spider, or an unstable room, or an actual dungeon.
3. Don't have monsters/traps/puzzles in every room, but always include something interesting. If i'm playing, I dont want to constantly be hindered by challenges 24/7, i want to see cool stuff in a fantasy adventure (and kill things, there needs to be some challenge)!
4. Don't be afraid to go old school, and on a related note, use old school design philosophy, the adventure isn't a story, it's a framework to build a story in! In all the sessions that I had a really good time as a player, the story never took the intended route, instead of fighting, we disguised ourselves as enemies, and used our knowledge of them to bluff our way past guards, while I sneaked off to do recon. Or that time when I gandalfed some half-ogres (minor illusion so I sounded like a half-ogre, made the ogres argue till they fought each other).
5. Dungeons are places to explore, and there should be plenty of things that make it feel special, even if it's just a strange fungus farm on one of the walls.
I did NOT eat those hikers.
Dungeons are places with an original purpose, a current purpose, a story, and a history - not just a random accumulation of rooms. They are places, with stories.
The Dwarven mining settlement becomes a home for creatures of the Underdark, and there is a story of its fall - that story being encoded in the rooms and artifacts of the dungeon, some of the wreckage, what is ruined and how, itself.
Once you know the story of the Dungeon, the design can largely write it'self.
The layout of the Dungeon is set by it's original purpose: a Dwarven mine, a lost temple, an abandoned village, a hidden tomb - these will all be very different.
Creating the changes and damage of the Dungeon's evolving history, that's where the DM can get really creative. Designing clues to tell the Explorers what happened here, in a realistic and interesting way is also a lot of fun ( wall inscriptions, lost fragments of scrolls, body or skeleton placement that seems random until you have deciphered who this was, and what they were trying to do, etc. ). Using these clues to create trails to optional areas of the Dungeon can also be very effective. Maybe the greedy Dwarven paymaster wrote about needing to hide the mine's payroll as there was fighting breaking out in the lower mines. Then the Party finds a skeleton, of a Dwarf in one of the side tunnels, killed by a cave in, whose belt buckle is the Family crest of the Paymaster's House. An astute Party who read the Paymaster's diary, and can recognize the crest ( I may have a seal, or other artifact in their office with that same crest ), might start searching near the skeleton to try and find the missing payroll. Parties who didn't investigate? Well, they'll probably miss out on the loot.
In short, coming up with the purposes of the Dungeon - both original and current - and sketching out how it got from it's former purpose to the latter, can make the job of creating your Dungeon a lot less work - and you can focus your creative energies on creating interesting clues and trails for your Party to follow, within it.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.