Campaign Design Project - 2022 (Part 3)

And Caverns Old

We now have a hex map of the local region for creating our campaign, but no where for our adventuring party to loot treasure and rout evil. So we need to start creating our centerpiece dungeon~ exciting! The party may venture off to other oneshot-type escapades, but this dungeon needs to last a while. As we get into it, let's go over some quick terminology.

In a classic Gygaxian campaign, these focal dungeons are common: His personal Castle Greyhawk, the namesake for the Campaign setting in which the Castle resides; Temple of Elemental Evil from…Temple of Elemental Evil; or my personal favorite, the crashed UFO from Expedition to Barrier Peaks. Each of these is an archetypal dungeon that a campaign can be focused around. They are also often referred to as Mega-dungeons.

We’ve briefly discussed before that mega-dungeons are larger environments, designed to be explored repeatedly, and just as importantly, they are living ecosystems, with multiple tiers or regions of different themes. Microcosms of creatures eking out existences within their habitats, rather than a single enemy force, or consistent mono-cultural theme throughout. 

(Note: Comparative images of regular, single theme dungeons and more complex megadungeons were lost from transfer from wordpress to blogspot)

On a mechanical level, normal dungeons are generally explored in one or two sessions, with little rest for the characters, while megadungeons are more like the very title for the Barrier Peaks puts it: "Expeditions". Resting, resupplying nearby, or just retreating to camp outside are not uncommon activities, and the GM will usually restock the areas that the party has cleared, as the party recouprates and time passes. Restocking does not function in the same gamified way as a video game respawning enemies, but more should have a narrative slant to it; creatures move about their living areas and react to changes in their environment, or new developments like outsiders settling into the ecosystem. Restocking should not result in simply refilling the rooms with the same enemies, the encounters should change and help lend the sense that the mega-dungeon is a real place.

Now, in previous Campaign Creation articles, I’ve used the term Mega-dungeon, but what we’re making here need not be as grand in scope. We’re not looking to make 20-30 rooms per floor. We’re looking to make enough for the next session or two, and expand as needed. So we’ll be calling this a Centerpiece for distinction. The mysterious locale that the local setting pivots around. Lore, story hooks, useful items; secret entrances; everything leads back to our centerpiece. Very often, a megadungeon can and does act as a centerpiece, but in campaigns with an experienced GM, you can let the party turn 180 degrees away from a mega-dungeon and explore in the opposite direction, letting go of having a focal point for your campaign and letting the party roam free. This style can work well for GMs that are well prepped and can improvise quickly, but those new to play should keep their games narrower in scope. 

Okay, time to take a look at our '75 guidelines to figure out what makes a good dungeon. These guidelines again come from Roy Otus' booklet on the G75C. We are going to end up going off-book from what is here, and you should always feel comfortable changing up the recommendations of any tool you use.

The Gygax 75 steps for Week 3:

1. Describe the dungeon entrance in one sentence of 7-10 words. This sets the mood for play.
2. Layout a "point-map". A rudimentary outline of the dungeon with lines as passages connecting each room together showing how they can be navigated, without specific detail.
3. A Centerpiece has 1d6+6 rooms per floor, and at least 3 floors to start. As a campaign continues, more can be added.
4. Include 1d3+1 ways up and down per level.
5. Each floor should have a theme. Use a "budget" by rolling 1d3+2 to stock a floor with thematic elements or creatures.
6. Make a list of a dozen or so iconic creatures and stock your dungeon.
7. Spread d6 MAJOR interactive set pieces throughout the dungeon. Not every room needs to be filled to the brim with some combat encounter, or the adventure will be a slog.
8. Note any treasure. Roll a 1d6 for each room or area. If there is a creature, encounter, or some interesting feature, there is treasure on a result of 1-4. Otherwise there is only treasure on a 1.
9. Design 3 wondrous items and stock the dungeon.
10. If you have any "budget" left, spend it to polish off detail in the dungeon.

Lastly, our Extra Credit!

• Properly Map out the Dungeon! 

Going off Book

Okay. Wow, long list, right? As I said, We're going off book. I'm not 100% on board with everything in there, and it's a lot to work through, so we're going to break this up into more than one post. Lets start with what we're going to change and why.

So we have to start by describing the entrance. Which is honestly an odd choice to me. While setting the mood for your players is important, not only do we not have a good enough handle on our dungeon yet to properly describe it, It is also odd to describe "THE" entrance. Because if you start with the entrance. that means its THE entrance. Not AN entrance. So you have a poorly Jaquaysed dungeon. 

Jaquaysed? Named for Jennell Jaquays, one of the earliest module designers. An Artist, Programmer, and member of the LGBTQ community who's early dungeon designs still set precedent for ideal layout today. Yes, we have been there since day one. RPGs belong as much to the queer community as anyone else. We can discuss that more in another article, perhaps in June for Pride, but lets dig into what the term means.

(There has been some debate about the correct terminology to use. It is Jaquaysing. Some time after coining the term, The Alexandrian tried to rename it in their namesake for use in a book to be soon published. Don't let Cis-washing remove an important figure from RPG history be erased. Jennell and her body of work is more important than a single GM How-To book. Please continue to use Jaquaysing to honor her name.)

Jaquaysing means following a series of tenets when designing a dungeon, ones I personally believe are more imperative than those attested to by Gygax 75 and the original Europa article. So, lets start a NEW list. Sorry, not-sorry.

Multiple Entrances and Exits - Few locations in the real world are accessible through only one point. On top of re-enforcing reality, this also provides tactical choices for the players. Both when the centerpiece is being returned to repeatedly, alternative entrances provide variety, or if a particular encounter is blocking progress.
Meaningful Branches - Any time a path diverges, if a branch leads to a single dead end room, with nothing beyond, it is not a meaningful path. So when you make passages that lead through your dungeon, it should be possible for parties to miss content. The party should be debating which way to go, and if they should explore thoroughly. If a path leads into a room, and they immediately turn back around to the split path, it was merely random chance
Meaningful Loops - With multiple entrances and exits, routes through should connect up, and double back creating the sense of a great expanse in the mythic underground.  A labyrinthine, non-linear dungeon that curves back on itself also makes mapping a must for the party, and provides multiple avenues for moving in combat, retreat, or random encounters.
Unusual pathing - Not every path between floors needs to be a staircase, be usable up and down, or connect adjacent floors. You could have a pit trap that drops you from floor one down to floor 3, a vinewall you can climb up from floor 4 to a secret area on floor 3, or a teleporter that randomly teleports to another one throughout the dungeon each time it is used. Never stick with mundane transitions between floors. Fantasy adventure should feel strange and unreal. In the right dungeons, you can even bend geometry, having paths connect that shouldn't, like an MC Esher painting.
Unusual Floor Makeup - Sub-Floors, Disconnected Areas, or even Linked Dungeons can all be mixed in a megadungeon. Undermountain is so big that an entire town of thieves and smugglers is hidden within. Temple of Elemental Evil has 4 elemental demiplanes within it. The Dark Tower is a misnomer as it is actually two towers buried next to each other.

Jaquaysing means never sticking with mundane dungeon layouts. That’s the simplified takeaway. Those 5 rules are the core ways to emphasize that. Your dungeons will benefit from them. If you want to go more in depth, the link above to the Alexandrian's original article starts a series entirely about that philosophy. 

So, we won't start with describing the entrance. Lets start with a layout. I do love the idea of starting with a point to point map, and I have another tool I used with my dungeon that helped create mine. We head back to itch.io again for Dungeon Trappings. Lindsey Bonnette created a great brainstorming tool with this booklet. It goes through a series of steps providing dungeon type, theme, simple layout, and then just vague enough encounters in each room for you to have a starting point. A great prompting tool. I can see it having other uses as well beyond dungeon design, but for now, it covers a lot of our bases.

A Clockwork Prison or a Ruined Desert?

I plan on my Centerpiece dungeon being Isle of Dread, which is more of a conversion than a full dungeon design. But, I conveniently have another point of interest we can use as an example for this process: Echo Cave Way. This point of interest is partly a shortcut through the southern hills, and partly a "mystery spot", where travelers might get lost in side passages leading into the ancient, ruined depths. Originally this was just going to be a thematic locale where a few random encounters might be different from normal travel, but we've got a dungeon to build! So, I decided to add a little to it.

We're doing three floors, but we'll just work through one of them here. So I look to Dungeon Trappings to give me a hand. Nothing we get from this tool is set in stone. If an idea strikes you or you know exactly what your dungeon's style and theme is, go with it. I know off the bat that my first floor is going to be Cave so I just roll for a "trapping" on that floor and get Illusionary for a theme. 

Floor 1 - Illusionary Cave

That combination makes sense, People get lost in here we now have a seed of why they get lost. I also had an extra idea while I was rolling for my other floors. As this was a dungeon with a traveling motif throughout, why not go a little gonzo with it. Exits could lead to far flung hexes. The Caves themselves could be non-euclidean space. You travel further outside than you do inside, or even in the wrong direction. Exit through a Southern tunnel after an hour's walk and appear somewhere up North, several day's journey away. Provides another interesting way to get around, should the players decide sailing isn't for them.

Anyway, with the theme set, I needed a layout. Which brings us to my favorite mechanic of Dungeon Trappings, the layout generation. Roll a pair of d6s that have pips, not numerals. Each pip represents a room. Keep any result that gives you 6+ rooms, then move them in a pleasing arrangement to create your map. Draw lines between them to create passages. Remember to follow our Jaquaysing rules. 

Moving the dice to move the dungeon is a great visualization tool.

I love this method so much. It's a great way to at least get a loose framework out before we go back and iterate on our design. Kudos, Lindsey.

If you want to make your centerpiece into a mega-dungeon, you could get cheeky and roll 3d6 instead, resulting in slightly more rooms on average. This won't affect your ability to use the rest of the booklet, and how you arrange the three dice can alter the overall layout from squat rounded floors, to long narrow cooridor-like floors.

With our layout done, Dungeon Trappings then leads us through the same theming process for each room like we did for the dungeon as a whole. For each room we roll a design, a theme, a type of encounter, and then a theme again for the encounter itself. We can then take these adjectives and nouns as literally or figuratively as we want to create our rooms.

Is a Red-Hot Kitchen full of spicy ingedients or is it powered by flame elementals?

So, we get a sort of content outline for the floor. This is almost enough for a One Page Dungeon, or a slick clifnotes blurb at the beginning of each room entry. But not quite. With this, though, we can start expounding ideas. Let's walk through a room and see what we come up with.

Floor 1 - Room 2

For my roll on Room 2, I ended up with a Rotating Hidden Room, containing a Roleplay encounter with a False Mad Man. So, lets ask ourselves how we interpret each of those. Quickly jot down or type up instinctual ideas as they come to you:

Is the Mad Man "false" in the sense that he is perfectly sane but acts mad to lure in others? Is he an illusion that riddles with the party about the operation of the rotating room? Maybe he pretends to be mad, but is actually sane, and uses the functions of the room against travelers? I liked that one the most out of the half dozen that I originally jotted down. There is a chance this character could survive the initial encounter, in which case I'll need to write up a few details about them for the players. They could become more of a recurring trickster rather than a villain. A character like Patches from Dark Souls, who becomes familiar with the mechanisms of dungeons and uses them to loot other explorers. I'll resist the urge to call them "Bandages" or something obvious.

Okay, encounter solved, so what about the room itself? Well, we can let the encounter inform the room. If "Bandages" is a trickster, they are probably using the content of the room to beguile the party. Of course, the party should have the chance to see through this, or "fail forward" options as events continue. I'm thinking the passage from Room 2 to 3 can rotate toward 7 or 8. Maybe the passage is out over open cavernous space, and characters on the platform risk falling down to Floor 2 (with potential damage) if they don't take precautions or pass a check. Or, perhaps the encounter in 7 or 8 is much more dangerous than 2 or 3? We could play with all of these, but lets discuss mixing in Floor 2.

Rock passages/platforms in caves don't usually move, so how does this connect with the theme? Well, I already rolled the Structure and Theme for Floor 2 and 3 (we're not going to work through each individually.) So I know that Floor 2 is a "Flooded Labyrinth", and Labyrinths definitely make sense having rotating passages. So, this could be a piece of Floor 2 thrust up into Floor 1. 

Letting your themes bleed through from one floor to the next is a great way to break up constantly using the same constant descriptors from room to room. Since Floor 2 is flooded, you can mention pools of water, perhaps in an otherwise dry cave, or actual streams running down over ledges, deeper underground. The Labyrinth part gives you a lot more to play with when trying to foreshadow areas ahead of the party, and piecemeal world flavor or lore. Ancient civilizations and their tiled stone work, statuary, art, and history can all be seeded throughout the floor above . You can even mix the wandering monster tables near the transition points, or when restocking later on. 

Stocking the Back Room

This basically covers the first few bullet points of our dungeon list: Theme, Layout, Jaquaysing, Room Encounters; and leaves us with: Encounter Tables, Rewards, Detailing, Map.

Essentially, we've built our dungeon, and now we have to stock it. Stocking really deserves an article unto itself. So its going to BE an article.

For now, take these ideas and begin the framework of your dungeon. Until we get to the Mapping stage, the dimensions and fiddly details of your rooms can remain nebulous. The important factors are how you describe a room to your players, what they might find in there, what they can interact with, and where they can go from here. Room size and shape aren't truly essential to completing encounters except for certain puzzles or traps. Without those, your rooms are really just lists of bullet points, nicely compact that allow you to improvise a full description, rather than try to memorize or narrate a full paragraph description. 

As a final laugh at my expense, behold my very crummy layout map  for Floor 1. Crude, but the intent is conveyed, most importantly to myself. Green is up, red is down, grey is a secret or moving passage, and the rooms are numbered. You can even tell that I rolled a 5 and a 4, but when I go to map this properly, the pips will not end up in this exact layout, nor will they be simple circles. Even if they were on my map, you get to describe them to your players in any shape you want.

Further Reading

• The Alexandrian - His Article has been re-written to rename the term, but the core content still refers to the works of Jennell Jaquays and her design techniques. I hesitate to direct you to this link, per the note above, but it is the original article coining the term. Please consider also studying her works directly to glean your own lessons.
• Lindsey Bonnete on itch.io - She has been consistently generating content over the last few months. Dungeon Trappings only came out in April, and it feels like a tool that should have existed forever
• Goodman Games - I don't have a problem, you have a problem! Not but seriously, this links directly to the "Original Adventures Reincarnated" series. Wonderful hardcover 300+ page books that include both a classic original TSR module and a expanded version for 5th edition. Each one also contains interviews with designers involved in the original projects providing interesting perspectives on their development. Not only can these books provide insight on their process, you can see what classic megadungeons look like, and how quality of life concepts and editing choices have evolved over the years. This can all help YOU design YOUR dungeons better. Also, just wonderful collectors items, or for nearly ready play at your table.
• Dungeon Scrawl - Don't get ahead of yourself, but when you feel like being artistic or just need a design tool, Dungeon Scrawl can help you map out your dungeon. We'll talk more about mapping dungeons in part 2, but play around with it. They just launched 2.0 which has vastly improved the experience.