The first, history, is important if you want to make a logical and intriguing dungeon. By knowing how a dungeon was made and why, you can more easily map it as well as ensure that the space doesn't feel like a mix of unrelated rooms. For example, if the dungeon was a living space, then you know you need a kitchen and bath. Perhaps servant quarters are needed or kennels for the builder’s pets. By knowing why it was built you know what rooms you need and roughly how they might be laid out. For example, the servants' quarters make sense to be near the kitchens and the master bedroom should be well insulated from the work areas.
The history of a dungeon also gives it character. Was it built in a rush with rough hewn walls or poorly fitted masonry? Or was it once a palace or temple with a beautiful mosaic on the floor? Was there an earthquake that collapsed certain passages? These little details help the dungeon from being just another set of 10 by 10 rooms and to draw your players further into the game.
The second feature is a sense of the unusual or magical, something that adds to the dungeon’s personality. Often you can find this element by looking at the history of the dungeon. Perhaps the dungeon is an ancient vault filled with mirror-like magical doors that the adventurers must find a way past. Or it might be built around a central shaft hundreds of feet deep. Or perhaps an ancient sorcerer grew the dungeon and the walls are alive. Again this helps to keeps your players' interest.
A side aspect of this is the idea of a transitional dungeon. That is to say a dungeon that connects other dungeons. Since my game focuses on dungeons, I set it in a city built over a labyrinth of interconnecting dungeons and caverns. So my dungeons all have connections to one or more other locations. For example, you might be able to access one dungeon from the sewers or by a hidden tunnel to a dockside warehouse. The sewers in turn may connect to several other dungeons before emptying in a large waterfall into a series of subterranean tunnels. The tunnels might connect to caverns of massive crystals, lost dwarven mines, ancient catacombs, or a city of underground slavers. This gives the characters new leads of where to go after the current dungeon is resolved as well as allowing you to reuse the old dungeon as a stop along the way to a new location.
This brings us to the last feature, that the dungeon is dynamic and changing. By having a dungeon evolve in response to the characters’ actions you add the potential for further plots as well as aiding in the suspension of disbelief. For example, when the party kills the ogre down the hall, this might allow other monsters to move in. They might set up defenses against the foes they know roam these hallways. Perhaps these creature find that hidden catch of magic items the group missed or perhaps the monstrous survivors of the earlier battle subjugate these new inhabitants and use them against the party in an act of revenge.
I personally find working out these shifts of territory and resources to be a fun diversion in between sessions. It also helps me to remain connected to the game, thinking about what would the monsters do with the new vacancies in the area. Would they move in? Would they move away to someplace safer? Or would this present an opportunity for them to accomplish something they otherwise could not?
As an example of how all of this can work in practice, let us look at a dungeon I used early on in my campaign: Old Keep. The idea behind Old Keep was that I needed a dungeon to replace an abandoned keep from Fiery Dragon's adventure Plague of Dreams. The details of that adventure are unimportant except that a pair of bandits, natives of the city the adventure is set in, are hiding there. In the search of a reward and a measure of revenge the adventurers were hunting these bandits.
In designing the dungeon, I immediately knew I wanted to place it inside the city with connections to the labyrinth below (thus helping to establish the setting). So the isolated keep from the adventure wouldn't do. Instead, I decided Old Keep would be a relatively unused fortress defending the lakeside of the city. With few threats from that direction and a newer fort under construction it was lightly used. Moreover rumors of hauntings in the lower levels meant that the old servant quarters and dungeons were sealed off.
Thus establishing the necessary isolation, I went to work on the history. Unsurprisingly Old Keep is the oldest fortress in the city. It was built to protect the area after the current rulers, the Giants, destroyed the cruel sorcerous Dramojh. Moreover it is built over the “ruins” of a Dramojh palace. The palace was essentially a giant plant which grew rooms and servants as the Dramojh prince needed them. The Giants burned it to the ground but to keep it from growing back they built the fortress over it, reinforced with magical runes to stunt plant growth. In addition to this purpose it also held a certain artifact, called the Ebon Ring, that the Giants were unable to destroy. The fortress then served as the center of power for the Giants, housing servants, holding prisoners, and being the location of their ceremonies. Eventually the lower levels fell into disuse and were sealed off.
With the history in place we now have some ideas for the original layout. We will need a dungeon with cells for prisoners and interrogation rooms. We might also include some servants’ quarters as well as wine cellar. The Giants are very big on ceremonies and so we need a ceremonial space. As this was a working fortress, a water source and an armory is also in order. Lastly there is the mysterious Ebon Ring Vault and the source of the hauntings. These will make our main areas of exploration.
So here we see my map. I put this together with Fractal Mapper which I find to be fairly simple to use and relatively inexpensive mapping program. I have placed the dungeon area in the lower right, the ceremonial area in the lower left, and the vault area in the upper left. The servants quarters and related rooms occupy the upper right. In the center the long room is our central armory and the circular chamber with the blue circle is a well room.
The jagged rooms and distorted layout in the servants' quarters area comes from our fantastic aspect: the old Dramojh dungeon has overpowered the wards here and is growing into the lower levels of Old Keep. This is also one of three links to other dungeons. Vines and fungi cover the floors and walls of the servants quarters, snaking outward from a large pit in the center of the region indicated by the other blue circle.
Another link are the two doors leading to the sewers (labeled room 17 on the map). Rusted and poorly locked, these are supposed to be reasonable entrances for the adventurers as well as some of the dungeon dwellers to make their way into Old Keep. The third link is the double doors to room 35 at the very top which leads to the Ebon Ring Vault. When I was building the dungeon I had no idea what was behind the door except that there was an old, potentially evil, artifact. I made sure the door was beyond the group’s current abilities at the time (they were about 3rd level) and left it for a later adventure.
There are also two other entrances for the adventurers to use to get into the dungeon. There is the secret passage leading from the old cells. This is the actual way the bandits snuck in here. Lastly there is the stairway down to the armory which they could have accessed by bribing or convincing the town guard to allow them to use. The other stairways are bricked up.
A final fantastic element is the hauntings. In this case I took the material from the original Plague of Dreams adventure. In there a demon is lurking near the site where an evil artifact was stored and its infernal taint has infected the dungeon causing mysterious sounds, spontaneous animating weapons, and other ghostly effects. Moving this demon to the area by the Ebon Ring vault we can have it drawn to the power of artifact stored there. The hauntings hopefully add to the creepy ambiance of the dungeon.
Finally I added an element of dynamic evolution. This actually flows from the history of the dungeon. Originally the dungeon was inhabited by a mix of undead and vermin along with the demon and his minions. A few years ago a tribe of frogmen moved into the area from the sewers and began breeding. When the bandits arrived they killed the leaders of the frogmen and set themselves up as the lords of that part of the dungeon. Later when the adventurers came in they killed the bandits and most of the frogmen but missed the demon and the undead. The frogmen rapidly reproduced from the left over piles of eggs and then fell under the sway of the demon who was then the most powerful force in the dungeon. Later when the adventurers returned they slew the frogmen utterly as well almost all of the other inhabitants of the dungeon. After this most creatures avoided the area.
So I hope this example shows how you can make your dungeons more exciting and interesting by incorporating a dungeon's history and magical elements. I'd love here your own ideas for making better and more engaging dungeons.
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