Pyramid #3/98: Welcome to Dungeon Fantasy

[trooper6]

Originally Posted by Joseph Paul

There are a couple of different ways that could go - do you mean designing the way a Medieval or Ancient architect would design a labyrinth or an extensive set of cellars and secret passages? Or same as the preceding but looking at what could be done with Magic!

Or are you talking about designing for the purpose of adventure? Which leads us to have rooms of traps and stompy living idols because...Adventure! and Plot!?

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

That's a pretty complicated topic. You can take a purely tactical approach, laying out specific challenges for adventures in a desired sequence. You can take a sort of aesthetic approach, thinking in terms of architectural design. Or you can draw from precedent, taking inspiration from the design and limitations of mines, tomb complexes, and dammit I don't have time for this but now I gotta start making notes anyway.

I run fantasy a lot...but not dungeon fantasy. Why? Because I'm not all that great as making dungeon maps. Towns? I can make. Forest areas? I can make. Buildings? Also, I can make those. But dungeons? I'm at a bit of a loss. Because dungeons as exist in dungeon fantasy are not dungeons you'd have in an actual castle...they are multi-level huge things...and I don't really have a good sense of how to make them. Populating dungeons isn't so hard. You just think what would be there and but them there. Grab some traps if you like and put them there. But is the actual maps I get lost on. It makes it hard to do dungeon fantasy.