6 METHODS FOR MAKING DUNGEONS MORE INTERESTING
The following tips from myself, the GM Mastery list, subscribers, and a couple of previous issues will help you liven up routine dungeon adventures and breathe fresh life into dungeon-ruts. If you’re not a fantasy GM, then when you read the word “dungeon” think symbolically. A dungeon is any story crucible that suits your genre and the tips below should still be of value—hopefully. :)
If you have a tip to share with your fellow GMs about making dungeons more interesting, send it on in to -- thanks!
1. Use The Five Room Model
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One thing that kills dungeons for me as a player and GM is length. If a crawl goes on and on I get bored and crave a change in play style. Not everybody feels this way, which is fine, but if you’re like me then you might consider trying the five room dungeon formula:
Room 1: Entrance And Guardian
Room 2: Puzzle or Roleplaying Challenge
Room 3: Red Herring
Room 4: Climax, Big Battle or Conflict
Room 5: Plot Twist
A two to four hour dungeon romp quickens flagging campaign and session pacing and can be squeezed into almost any on- going story thread. It also grants a quick success (or failure) to keep the players keen and excited, is quick to plan for, lets GMs “theme” dungeons with greater ease, and can be plopped into most settings with minimal continuity issues.
Room 1: Entrance and Guardian
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There needs to be a reason why your dungeon hasn’t been plundered before. A rule of thumb is, the older the dungeon the more difficult room 1 needs to be—else the place would have been discovered and sacked well before the PCs come along. Also, a guardian sets up some early action to capture player interest and energize a session.
Room 1 challenge ideas:
* The entrance is trapped.
* The entrance is cleverly hidden.
* The entrance requires a special key, such as a ceremony, command word, or physical object.
* The guardian was deliberately placed to keep intruders out.
* The guardian is not indigenous to the dungeon and is a tough creature or force that’s made its lair in room 1.
* Turn room 1 into a puzzle by creating a special requirement that lets the PCs pass (i.e. a riddle to
solve).
Room 1 is also your opportunity to establish mood and/or theme to your dungeon, so dress it up with care.
Room 2: Puzzle Or Roleplaying Challenge
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The PCs are victorious over the challenge of room 1 and are now presented with a trial that cannot be solved with steel. This will keep the problem solvers in your group happy and break the action up a bit for good pacing.
Room 2 can be an independent puzzle, or preferably, one that grants approach to rooms 3 and 4. It should allow for multiple solutions and engage more than just the rogue or wizard in the party.
Room 2 ideas:
* Ye old classic death trap.
* Magic puzzle, such as a chessboard tile floor with special squares.
* An intelligent entity grants access to the rest of the dungeon but must be befriended, not fought.
* A being far more powerful than the PCs must be roleplayed/negotiated with.
Once you’ve figured out what room 2 is, try to plant one or more clues in room 1 about potential solutions. This will tie the adventure together a little tighter, will delight the problem solvers, and can be a back-up for you if the players get stuck.
Room 3: Red Herring
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The purpose of this room is to build tension. The players think they’ve finally found the treasure, confronted the stage boss, and achieved their goal only to learn they’ve been tricked.
The best red herrings allow the PCs a choice between choosing room 3 or room 4 and then issue a penalty to those who choose room 3. In other words, avoid railroading PCs into taking room 3 because it will dampen the red herring’s tension-building effect and puts a GM on thin ice as far as issuing a penalty is concerned.
Room 3 ideas:
* “The passage ends in a ‘T’. The right looks well-travelled and the corridor is unremarkable. The left looks untouched, smells faintly of cinnamon, and there’s a mysterious orange glow that can barely be seen at the end. Which way to do you go?” The left passage leads to the red herring.
* A fake sarcophagus that contains another guardian.
* A collapsed structure blocks part of the area. The debris is dangerous and blocks or hides nothing of importance.
* Contains a one-way exit (so the PCs must return and deal with rooms 1 and 2 again). i.e. teleport trap, one-way door, 2000 foot water slide trap.
* Room 3 does contain the PCs' goal but hides the presence of room 4, which contains an even greater reward.
Another potential payoff for room 3 is to weaken the PCs to make them more vulnerable for room 4. Perhaps room 3 simply contains a tough combat encounter. If this is the case, try to weaken any strengths that would give the PCs an advantage in room 4.
For example, if room 4 contains a mummy monster that is quite susceptible to fire, then make room 3 a troll lair (another creature often susceptible to fire) so the PCs might be tempted to burn off a lot of their fire magic, oil, and other flammable resources. This would turn a plain old troll battle into a gotcha, and thus a red herring, once the PCs hit room 4 and realize their mistake.
Don't forget to dress room 3 up with your theme elements to lend it credibility!
Room 4: Climax, Big Battle Or Conflict
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This room is The Big Show. It’s the big combat or conflict encounter and is the final challenge before the Big Reward. Try to make the environment interesting, engage all the PCs, and provide opportunities for PC tactical advantage so thinking players will be rewarded.
Room 5: Plot Twist
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Here’s your opportunity to change the players’ bragging to “we came, we saw, we slipped on a banana peel.” Room 5 doesn’t always represent a complication or point of failure for the PCs, but it can. Room 5 doesn’t always need to be a physical location either—it can be a twist revealed in room 4.
Room 5 is where your creativity can shine and is often what will make the dungeon different and memorable from all the other crawls in your campaigns.
Room 5 ideas:
* Another guardian awaits in the treasure container.
* A trap that resurrects or renews the challenge from room 4.
* Bonus treasure is discovered that leads to another adventure, such as a piece of a magic item or a map fragment.
* A rival enters and tries to steal the reward while the PCs are dealing with the big challenge in room 4.
* The object of the quest/final reward isn't what it seems or has a complication. i.e. the kidnapped King doesn't want to return.
The five room format is simple yet allows for variety and permutation, thus it’s a powerful little GM tool. I feel a GM is always better off improving their dungeons by making them smaller because it gives them more planning time for clues, plot hooks, character involvement, twists, etc.
If you experiment with the five room format, write in and let me know how it goes!
2. Give Each Player A Goal Or Something To Do
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The best way to avoid tedium in any game is to make sure every player has something to do. With my group, that generally means at least one use of Bardic Lore, an opportunity to sneak around and disable traps, NPCs who must be cajoled (Diplomacy/Bluff) into revealing information, morally ambiguous characters for the cleric to lecture, and big combats for the barbarians.
Make sure each portion of the dungeon has something for each character to do and you’ll stave off tedium just fine.
A great way to manage this is to start a Player Journal. Place each player’s name and character overview (class/profession, skills, abilities) on a sheet of paper. Next, write out what you know about each player’s gaming preferences (i.e. combat, likes high fantasy effects, social player, etc.). Then, write out ways you can entertain and/or challenge each player’s PC. This becomes your “theory” section—draw a line across the page and start the “journal” section.
In the journal section, watch your players during games and note exactly when an individual is having a great time. What are they doing? What is their character doing? What’s happening right now in the session?
Also note on paper if any of the elements from your theory section work out well so that you have an instant in-game resource if you get stuck for ideas.
If you make a few theory and journal notes like this for each player, you are guaranteed to build a realistic profile over a short period of time to help you successfully plan for each session.
Other dungeon tips:
1) Where do the inhabitants get their food? Trade with a nearby tribe or town? Raid other levels of the dungeon? Cannibalize each other? Any of these answers will change the feel of the dungeon as well as the reaction of the inhabitants to invaders. Traders may welcome a new presence, weak monsters may seek to use the players as allies against raiders, cannibal cultures will require a good deal of caution to retrieve one’s wounded and dead. You can come up with more, of course, as well as combine ideas.
2) Why do the inhabitants live here? Protection for themselves? Protecting something else? Driven below ground and forced to remain by something powerful inside or out? Again, answers may vary, but it will impact the plot and character of the dungeon.
3) Do any of the PCs have backgrounds you can use to create subplots in the dungeon? Perhaps a monk’s long-lost master is a prisoner here, or the orphan finds a tapestry portrait of herself in tatters on the floor. This allows a subplot without impacting the main plot of the central adventure and relieves tedium for the dungeon-bored-players involved.
3. Put A Time Limit In Effect
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One piece of advice I would give: put a timer on it. Tell the PCs they have such and such many days (or hours...) to get through a certain dungeon area, grab the McGuffin of stupendous power, and get it to the temple of whatzizface before all hell breaks loose.
Related to this tip, time limits, you could have the dungeon slowly becoming more deadly for some reason:
* Filling up with water.
* Filling up with lava.
* Filling up with gas.
* Slowly shifting to another plane.
It’s a race to either get out or find a way to stop the danger.
Add a role-playing angle: there’s intelligence behind the increasing danger that can be negotiated with, or a being who could be convinced to fix the problem. i.e. a xorn (an earth type creature) could be convinced to re-route the lava flow into a gigantic empty cavern with its burrow through rock ability. Or, the creature whose poisonous breath is filling up the place could be convinced to move elsewhere, temporarily or permanently.
4. Change The PCs' Size
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Has anyone ever played the AD&D module Dungeonland? The PCs are shrunk down to about 1” tall and all the boring old obstacles become new and challenging again. I suppose one could watch “Honey, I Shrunk The Kids VIII” for inspiration.
The biggest benefit to your dungeon in this situation is that the players get to perceive things in a fresh new way. What other ways could you dramatically change player perception of your dungeon?
* The PCs are made intangible, gaseous, or ethereal.
* The PCs are cursed with permanent invisibility. Cursed, you ask? I'm sure crafty GMs can make a dungeon where the PCs will wish they were visible again. :)
* All the typically dumb creatures are super-intelligent and the normally good creatures are evil.
5. PCs Must Muster Allies
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One thing you may want to think about is letting your heroes incite a local town or militia to come help them clear out the evil dungeon denizens. After all, with enough numbers townspeople can take on the monsters—all they need is a little leadership to overcome their fear.
Create a dungeon where the foe is too tough for the PCs to handle by themselves so they must seek allies. A nice twist is if the characters must approach their rivals for assistance!
6. Turn It Into A Competition
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One easy way [to make crawls interesting] is to populate the dungeon with several groups of NPCs that are all competing with each other. Even within a single tribe of goblins there can be several factions vying for power.
The new XCrawl d20 setting and the Running Man movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger are good examples of a competitive dungeon environment. The presence of rivals also turn crawls into fun competitions as well.
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