Intermission: Dungeon Rooms

 A common failure mode I run into when designing a dungeon is the need to have rooms with a purpose. I'm very much a fan of verisimilitude in my games, whether those be tabletop or video games, and I like form to follow function. The problem with this is that it's often boring; most historical castles didn't have a huge variety of needs. Think about your own house - you have a kitchen, a living room, enough beds for everyone, a bathroom, a garage, maybe a storage room or two... and then what? This is one reason why I struggle to play much Minecraft these days - I've built a bedroom, a storage room, an enchanting room - what else do I need?

Farleigh Hungerford Castle, in Somerset, England

We can see most of these have rough analogues in medieval castles (and therefore fantasy). We can even throw in some things that are historical but not really in the right place - why does every other dungeon in Skyrim have a well-stocked forge, anyway? - but we're likely to end up with a laundry list of rooms that don't really have much to distinguish between them. I love Appendix I as much as the next man, but for most purposes the difference between an armoury and a workshop is pretty small, and trying to make them make sense can raise further questions that really don't need to be asked. Using realistic rooms also limits the shape, and the things you can put in it. What order should they go in? Should the conjuring room come before the audience chamber? Does each of them need an antechamber? Where does the robing room go? What is a robing room? At this point I usually look for an actual map of a castle and use that, therefore defeating the purpose of the exercise. 

Excerpt from Appendix I, from the Advanced D&D Dungeon Master's Guide

So trying to keep dungeon rooms to some kind of reasoning is pretty fraught with difficulties, and worse, it doesn't really matter! I could walk through Bleak Falls Barrow in my sleep at this point, but I couldn't tell you if the first room was a great hall or an throne room. What was the room with the giant spider? There were burial urns in it. There were burial urns in every room, come to think of it - and my enjoyment was about the aesthetic and gameplay of the room, not the realism. There's high ceilings and low ceilings, walls covered in cracks and walls covered in webs, floors that are level and floors that rise and fall like rolling hills. Bone-chilling winds passing through one room, coiling mists seeping across another. Cave rooms, as well - what's the purpose of this room? Doesn't have one, it's a cave. There's three giant spiders and a silver ring in there, go whack them. 

So, to excuse the unannounced two-week holiday from Sternvale Adventures, I present my personal checklist on how to make a room. Even one of these things, sufficiently emphasised, can make a room stand out, so don't overdo it, but they can make a good starting point, which can be varied as you wish throughout the dungeon. 

Size and shape

• Is the room big or small?
• Is the room tiny like a closet, small like a bedroom, large like a throne room? I tend towards small rooms, again for verisimilitude - big rooms are hard to keep warm, unless you expect to keep a lot of people in them (like a barracks). 
• How high are the ceilings? 
• Are the ceilings high like a cathedral? Can they fit a large man, or are they for shorter people - anyone over 6 foot who's had the pleasure of visiting a historical cottage or Tudor building can attest to the discomfort? 
• Are they even lower - designed for dwarves or halflings, or even so low you have to crouch or crawl (and therefore the favourite hiding spots of slimes, spiders and snakes)? 10 foot ceilings are classic in gaming, but would be historically quite rare - and still be low enough to penalise the idiot who brought the halberd or long spear (me). 
• Is the room wide or narrow, long or short? 
• Could you walk three abreast, or do you have to take off your plate armour and squeeze down it crab-walking? More importantly, what can terrorise you while you do so - is it safe because the ogre can't grab you (shades of Outlast), or is it filled with centipedes? Why not both? Particularly for GURPS, try justifying swing damage when you can't move your arm through more than a 15 degree arc. Suddenly the long spear shines!

Sadly, Korone will be disappointed.

• Is the room square, or round? 
• Is it another regular polygon, like a hexagon, or maybe it's a blob like a cave? "Weird" shapes like circles, hexagons and diamonds (or is it just a diagonal square?) can be used for emphasis, but don't overdo them - they're best for set-pieces, or for separate buildings like towers and huts. 
• Are there irregularities in the shape? 
• Are there alcoves and hollows to hide in, or pillars and bulging walls? Are there trenches and gutters to channel water (or attackers)? Raised platforms or walkways to launch slings and arrows from (verbal or literal)?

Walls and floors

Most of the advice that applies to walls also applies to floors with a little bit of thought. First I think about the walls, then go through the same list, mentally replacing "walls" with "floors".

• What are the walls made of? 
• Are there walls? Were there ever walls? 
• How thick are they - are they a thin façade, or a solid bulwark? If the party want to cut through, would it be easy, hard, or impossible?
• Do soft earth walls have supports, or not? What are the supports made of? If it's not supported, is the room safe?
• If they're wood, dark wood or light wood, planks or logs - or magically grown walls? Is it alive - with twigs and thorns (and termites)? What about paper walls (whether they be from shouji sliding doors or giant wasp nests)?
• Extravagant metal plates - why? How big are they? Are they small and interlocking, or huge and riveted together? Are they solid, or grating, or wire mesh? How big are the holes, how sturdy is the wire?
• Are they made of stone? Is it cut, carved, or rough? Was it done magically, or with a pick and chisel, or by natural erosion or tectonic activity? What kind of stone? Rough granite, smooth marble, crumbling sandstone, faceted obsidian? Has it been shaped into bricks? How large are they? How well do they fit together - can you fit your finger in the gaps or could they keep out a slime?
• What condition are the walls in? 
• Are they smooth and well-kept, or cracked and collapsing? Could you see through them? Is there light on the other side (from a lantern, or the sun), or just a nest full of deadly eye-poker scorpions? 
• If they're broken, what did it? The ravages of time, an acidic monster, plant roots, or a delver with a sledgehammer?
• What's on the walls?
• Are they decorated? Things you could remove (and sell) - wall-hangings, tapestries, paintings and bunting? Or chalk, paint and wall-carvings? What's depicted - is there a motif? Were the decorations always there, or were they added later - orcs leaving bloody handprints and rotting skins, or delvers leaving scratched warnings and hurried depictions of the monster that's about to attack you this very second?
• Is there stuff living on the walls? Lichen, moss, or fungi can all be flavourful (or deadly). Is there ivy to cling from? Is it safe, or are there bugs living in it? Maybe the bugs are affecting the wall - is it covered in webs or brood combs? What about slime, scum and scale - whether that be from monsters, or just hard water?
• Are the walls smooth, or do they have protrusions? Are there handholds, jutting bricks, candle spikes?
• What's behind the walls? 
• Is it solid stone, soft earth, or just a void? Is there water, air, magma? Are they warm, or cool to the touch - maybe so much it hurts? Is there another room? Is there empty space, or has someone hidden something - a trap, or a mechanism, or treasure (or themselves)?

Light and atmosphere

• Is it light, or dark? Where does the light come from?
• Does the light cover the whole room, or are there shaded areas? Are the shady bits deliberate (people trying to sleep) or accidental (quirks of architecture)?
• Is there natural light, whether that be from the sun, moon or stars - or magma? 
• Are there artificial lights? Do they need replacing, and if so, who does it? Are they blazing braziers or dim candles? 
• What about unnatural light - magical orbs, glowing moss, pulsing runes? 
• The flipside of unnatural light is unnatural darkness. Is there mystical fog or a curtain of magical darkness?
• Is it warm, or cold? 
• Is the temperature deadly, unbearable, uncomfortable or comfortable? 
• Where does the heat come from - is it geothermal, or is the thermostat up too high? Is there a monster that makes it warm, like a dragon or a magma cube? Is it everywhere?
• If it's cold, where does the heat go? Is it cold outside, or is the cold from inside the building? Is the cold on purpose, or is it incidental? 
• What is the air like? 
• Is there air? If not, why not? Does air enter the room when you open the door, or is it a magical vacuum chamber for nefarious purposes?
• Is the air moving? How fast, in what direction? Is it always moving, or are there pauses? 

Occasional blasts of wind in Deep Rock Galactic can propel dwarves very far indeed. 

• Is the air clear, or is it hard to see through the haze? Is there dust, or mist, or spores, or toxic gas? Remember to assign a penalty for it - a visibility penalty of even -1 or -2 can make the difference if trying to challenge high-skill delvers!
• Is the air safe to breathe? The sporting GM will make nerve gas or mind-control spores visible. The GM with a party full of 500-point gods will not. 
• What does the air smell like? Does it smell good, like flowers, or bacon (probably not for a good reason), or does it smell bad, like corpses and excrement (also probably not for a good reason)? Could it make you start coughing (-3 to DX), or retching (-5 to DX)?
• What does it sound like? 
• Is it as silent as the grave, or hard to hear each other? 
• Is there an echo? 
• Are there natural noises, like howling or moaning wind, creaking or slamming doors? 
• Are there unnatural noises, like screaming, giggling, scuttling or roaring? Is there music? Is there the sound of mechanisms, like grinding, whirring or rhythmic clunking?

Entrances and exits

• Are there doors, holes, windows or archways in the walls? 
• Are they at floor level? How big are they? The doors may be smaller than you think. 
• Are they in the middle of the wall, or the corner? 
• How do the doors open? Do they swing - inwards, or outwards - or do they slide, vertically or horizontally?
• Are there trapdoors or holes on the floors and ceilings? 
• Can the average adventurer fit through them? Can monsters fit through them? Were they always there? How do you traverse them - ladder, rope, lift, fireman's pole?
• How are the portals constructed?
• Are they empty holes? Were they always that way, or has someone removed the door?
• What are they made of? Are they made of wood, metal, stone, or something else - paper and glass are interestingly modern choices. 
• How thick are they? Are they flimsy, warped outhouse doors or massive steel vaults? 
• Are they locked or otherwise sealed - bars, wedges, magical locks? 
• Are they trapped? How complicated is the trap? 
• Are there hidden, or magical, entrances and exits (the two are functionally very similar)?
• Are they open, or closed? What would you need to do to open them (or close them)? Is there something waiting on the other side? 
• Are they obvious, or cleverly hidden?

Conclusion

I'm deliberately stopping here, without going into populating the room - filling it with monsters, tricks, traps, or loot - because those things follow naturally from the questions above. A cut stone ancient temple will be filled with deliberate monsters, such as golems and raised skeletons, and deliberate loot, like golden idols placed into stone sarcophagi and left on trapped pedestals. A mossy cave is more likely to contain giant frogs and sacks of goblin detritus left in a heap under a filthy blanket. Rooms with entrances at the ceilings will be populated by flying enemies, while those lit by candles will have intelligent enemies like cultists and bandits.

You have a huge number of options available to you, without needing to think at all about why the room was built (if you don't want to, of course). The trick is to vary things just a little between rooms, so there's no jarring dissonance between one room and the next - say both rooms are made of cut stone, but this one has cracks in the ceiling, while the other didn't. This one has the floor made of wooden planks, while the next has cobblestone. With a buffet this large and a little bit of logical thought and creativity, you'll be well on your way to sticking memorable dungeons together in much shorter time. Happy dungeon keeping!