Adventure Design 101: Dungeons That Make Sense

Dungeon of the Chateau de Chillon, Switzerland. Photograph by Ioan Sameli via Wikimedia Commons.

I recently wrote about making your setting work for you.  Today’s topic is related:  How do you make all of these dungeons feel like a realistic part of your game world?

Say you’ve got a dungeon with goblins in one complex of rooms, a dwarf necromancer and his ghouls down the hall, and a colony of giant ants around the corner.  What the heck are they all doing there?

You could just present all of that and answer, “They’re there for the players to outwit, outfight, and make off with their loot.”  I think most gamemasters probably started with games that ran like that, and I know many who still do, at least once in a while.  It can be a lot of fun to just kick in the door and face whatever’s behind it without worrying about a greater backstory.  But let’s say you and your group want that backstory.

That’s where you get into the history and ecology of the dungeon.  A lot has been written on these topics, but I’m going to try to break it down to make it as easy to use as possible.  Important questions you should ask regarding your dungeon include:

Who Built It, and Why?

You don’t necessarily need a specific name, but the identity of the dungeon’s creators and the purpose they had in mind for it will help to shape it.  A dungeon built by a mad archmage as a zoo and prison for his experimental aberrations won’t look like a tomb built by an ancient civilization for their great king, and neither will look like the fortress the orcs built to guard the mountain pass and to serve as a base for their future attack against the players’ nation.

For some dungeons, like natural cavern systems, the answer will be “Nobody, it just is that way.”  That’s okay.

That dungeon I mentioned before?  It’s a warren the necromancer built beneath his manor on the outskirts of town, so that he could have a place to research and experiment in secret.

Who or What Lives There, and Why?

The first part is pretty straightforward — what will the characters encounter if they explore the place?  Is the original builder still there, or absent?  The why is the more important, and more interesting, question.  For non-mindless creatures, it usually boils down to one of two things:  safety, or access to a desired resource.  If the resource is desired enough, it might even override safety.

In our sample dungeon, the necromancer is there for safety — it keeps the neighbors from noticing the dark rituals he enacts.  The goblins are there because he pays them well to keep him supplied in fresh corpses; they’re wary of his magic, but their greed has overcome their reluctance.  The giant ants are there because the goblins are lacking in cleanliness and the food that’s left about has attracted them from their nearby colony.

How Do They Interact?

Any non-mindless dungeon inhabitants who are very near each other will develop an attitude toward each other.  If they’re unfriendly, they probably fight for territory or other resources — or, if one side is far weaker, it might try to avoid the other as much as possible, set traps and alarms against it, and so on.  If they’re friendly, they might be allies, master and servant, or just nodding acquaintances.

We know how the goblins see the necromancer; he, in turn, considers them useful but ultimately expendable.  The necromancer considers the ants a nuisance and sends his ghouls after them on occasion; he’s ordered the goblins to exterminate them, too, but they don’t make any particular effort to unless he’s nearby or they’re attacked by the ants.

What Do They Eat and Drink?

Unless the residents are all undead, constructs, and the like, they’ll need food and water.  If the dungeon doesn’t provide those itself, then it will need to have easy access to the outside world, so the inhabitants can go and gather some.  It’ll probably also have to have storage space, so the inhabitants don’t have to go gather food every couple of hours.  Conversely, a dungeon that’s too deep for the inhabitants to easily forage on the surface must provide water, in the form of springs, underground rivers, wells, and the like.

Along with this goes the problem of handling waste products.  This could take up a great deal of space in some cases.  Think about where in the dungeon that space lies.

Where Do They Keep Their Stuff?

You don’t carry around all of your worldly possessions with you on a daily basis, and chances are your intelligent dungeon dwellers won’t, either.  They’ll have with them things that might be immediately useful, of course — a few coins, a tool for whatever job they perform, quite probably a weapon.  They’ll also have with them things that they find aesthetic, or that they don’t want to part with — a lucky pebble, a gold ring, a letter from the goblin girl back home.  But some of their possessions, like a bolt of fine silk they looted from a passing caravan or a gold statuette they haven’t remembered to tell the master they found in the closet while cleaning, they probably don’t carry 24/7.

Where do they leave it?  Probably in their lair, near wherever they sleep.  If they have the means, and consider it valuable, it’s likely to be hidden and/or locked up and/or guarded.  The character quirks of the owner might play in, of course; someone especially paranoid or miserly might tightly guard even a few coppers, while someone careless might leave something valuable lying out in plain sight.

This is getting a bit long, so I’ll stop here for now.  Expect more in this vein in the next article.

Related posts:

1. Adventure Design 101: Dungeons That Live
2. Adventure Design 101: The Setting
3. Adventure Design 101
4. Adventure Design 101: The Plot – Problems
5. Adventure Design 101: The Villain