Yep, if you can't figure that out it might be best to go for undeads or golems as your theme. I have done that a few times when I first designed the something cool but when looking on it, I just couldn't see how something could survive in there. Skeletons does not eat after all. :)
@@LadyLunarSatine Well, not with goblins, they eat trash.... But we all heard the story about the DM who put a globe of annihilation down a hole and TPKed his entire party with it. I am more worried where the smoke go then how they put out fires if they use fires in a cave or similar. I mean a bucket of water puts out the fire fine but have they constructed a chimney for a cave? Anyways, a trash room is always nice, you can put in a gleaming trinket and the players will crawl through all the trash, smelling like (insert disgusting thing here) when they roll for spot hidden. "Wow, a ring worth 20 gold" and the entire party wont be let into town until they bathed in the cold river. ;) I might be slightly evil.
Seth I would like to say that I will be trying my hand as a keeper for the haunting this Saturday. I'm very exited and thank you for introducing me to Call you Cthulhu
I know it'd be more for the second part, but I remember playing a session in 2300 where we boarded an abandoned ship from an alien species. The airlock into the ship was kinda trapped by design. Due to how they saw colors, red was their color for safe and green was the danger color. So as we approached the airlock it was pressurized, but looked safe to open. It was just a small detail that helped to show the former owners were different from us.
Now that is good stuff. It reinforces the alien mindset of the designers and undermines any sense of familiarity while serving as a nice (ha) opener to knock the rust off the group and get them to either focus or freak out. That is elegant design.
I run an ancient aliens Pathfinder campaign, and one of the aliens has red as the "good" color and yellow as the "bad" one. Similar effects. Any little weird thing like that can give the players a sense of, well, alienness.
There was that and one other, I believe, that REALLY dove deep into the details and had lots of cool pictures. It wasn't until I started organizing my notes for the video that it even occurred to me just how many dwarven towns and cities I've done over the years.
Secret doors are the best. I have very fond memories of a private school I attended that was in an old mansion that had a hidden staircase. It opened to a closet on the upper floor. Old houses sometimes have servant's quarters/wings that might be a bit concealed to allow unobtrusive movement.
They also had things like doors that just lead to outside or a sudden drop inside or outside for people trying to steal from them to fall down, Iam not kidding and didn’t believe it till I saw it personally. I saw still working ones and sealed one. Went to a very old Catholic school that had a house for nuns to live in next to it, there was a under ground tunnel system with a pit that lead to who knows where and ways to get into the walls and fake roof and so much I didn’t even get a real look at. To top it off the old nuns house supposedly had a sister decided to “hang out” about 80-100 years prior to my time there. There was also a fallout shelter that connected to the public school next door and some of the houses had those and escape routes built into them. If anyone gets a chance to check out old plantation houses in the south, some still have servant quarters and all the rest still they are not only educational but this weird hybrid of industry and a place people really lived their lives in and such a departure from todays way of life that they can give map makers a great perspective on things. Old buildings are cool :D
"Marty, you aren't thinking 4th dimensionally!" is what I heard when Seth was talking about needing to think in 3 dimensions when it comes to planning your room layouts lol.
Resources for ideas: ancient Egyptian tomb complexes, De Re Metallica by Agricola (illustrated treatise on mining from 16th century,) The Pyrotechnia by Vannoccio Birunguccio; also, salt mines from the mountains around Salzburg.
Here's a like and a comment for the algorythm. Also thanks for the quality content, Seth, you're the man. Also the ork and the demon and the cthulhu god - everything GM has to be :D
@15:15 When Seth was describing reuse of the giant bronze doors, I saw one door suspended over a fire and used as a giant hibachi grill. Kobolds loudly running around prepping meals and delivering provisions in and out of the chamber.
@@grzegorzmajewski. there isn’t just one ‘bronze’ there are different alloys with differing melt characteristics. So in a fantasy campaign there could easily be a bronze alloy with some alternative elements added with a higher melt and deformation point? I wouldn’t let something so prosaic as the melting point of bronze Eliminate a cool scene if there is any way around it.
Thanks, Seth. I literally just saw a video where you said you're a badass dungeon designer. I think it was the first episode of the Modern Mythos podcast. I may be wrong. But I'm really looking forward to seeing this all play out. I love all your videos and I'm excited to read your books
Your guidelines for creating a dungeon are the same as mine. If there is an encounter in a dungeon, there needs to be a reason why it's there. I did a Mummy’s Tomb dungeon for a 5e one-shot, heavily based on actual Egyptian tombs. Most *living* monsters wouldn't work - this tomb had just been discovered, nothing inside should be able to survive. However, my solution was the inspiration from the Egyptians mummifying animals, including big cats. So I took the stats for a cheetah and templated it to be Mummified. So when two large Mummified Cheetahs appeared after being awoken by a trap, my players were caught off-guard. They loved it because it was a monster that they had *never* encountered before, and it presented a good challenge for them. It was also incredibly on theme AND there was a reason for them to be there.
Half of this video (which I enjoy) is Seth spoiling The Tomb of Horrors without saying he’s spoiling the Tomb of Horrors. Having been caught by the pit trap’s secret door myself, I am all for this passive aggression.
The moment i saw the playtime with ~40minutes and felt surge of good feelings thinking:"Yes, this is gonna be good." I love watching p&p GM's rambling about the things they love and espessially from Seth.
That shot of the 2nd edition catacombs guide brought back a sudden flush of memories for me. I gave TSR a LOT of my money back in the day... well my parent's money.
Underground, water flowing through the earth accumulates. Getting rid of or controlling that water is a big part mining engineering. Flooded tunnels offer HUGE opportunities for underwater adventures. Uncorking backed up drain systems could be the key to wiping out powerful enemies, and weather above ground can impact game play as rainwater seeps through the rock/earth to inundate those below
I am currently running the pathinder 2e adventure path Abomination Vaults. One of the main features is an indestructible lighthouse artifact that extends down through all 9 underground levels above a shrine to an outer god. When the players find that circular room it gives them a refrence point for whete they are in this place.
A few years ago my sisters got me a book called "The Monsters Know What They're Doing" by Keith Ammann. Great book with great ideas on how encounters with different monsters might work in a dungeon or which dungeon types work with which monsters in which ways. Highly recommended.
Thanks so much for making this video! I listen to a lot of these as I struggle with making good dungeons for my players, but I can seldom retain any knowledge or apply it in practice. But I find your way of presentation so much easier to follow. I really appreciate it!
One of the things I enjoy doing when I forget and make a secret door essential to a dungeon is to have the characters catch a denizen using that door we're going down what appears to be a dead end Passage
A few considerations specific to caves: Caves are generally formed by erosion, so they tend to be very wet. Never go into a cave when it's raining. Flooding is one of the biggest dangers in caves, not just because of the risk of drowning or deadly chemicals in the water, but because it can trap you, cutting off your oxygen supply. Pumping water out of mines was how the Industrial Revolution began. Caves tend to be disorienting - places light has never touched, where a sound can keep echoing for days, aren't an environment most people can navigate by intuition. There's a saying among spelunkers: "If it breathes, it leads." It means any passage with a draft isn't going to be a dead end. That doesn't necessarily mean it's traversible without a lot of work, nor that the air will be safe to breathe.
Dude, in my opinion you have the most consistent DM academy content on TH-cam. You’ve helped me turn my DM dreams into an amazing reality. Thank you for making awesome videos ❤️❤️❤️
I've always thought that the Sedlec Ossuary in Czech Republic would make for an amazing dungeon locale. The whole interior and much of the furnishings are made from tens of thousands of human skeletons. Imagine breaking into the headquarters of a cabal of necromancers and finding it full of this macabre yet still beautiful architecture that perfectly camouflages the enemy's minions.
In case anyone hadn't come across it yet, I'd also recommend the book "Image of the City". It's a short urban planning study/survey, and how people's spatial mental map building-blocks are paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks.
"A Dwarven Mine that became a dwarven city then was abandoned and overrun by goblins. " So in summary let Dwarf Fortress (the game) generate a dungeon and its entire history for me - GOT IT!
One thing that I would suggest is that you also ignore a lot of MMO dungeons, at least more modern ones as they tend to be more linear in design because they tend to want to funnel the players in a specific direction, same with a lot of game dungeons because they are, normally a get from X to Y and looking neat along the way with side paths to extras.
I agree. Even when Seth is talking about stuff I do all the time he always has a hidden gem (or 6) about the theory behind it. This video being an excellent example
Solid gold as always. Over the last couple years I've been running a campaign centred arround a knightly order that hid the parts of a powerful magical device in effectively "Dungeon Safes". First defence was no one knew they existed, but if you can locate them, then you have to find a way in, and through to the vault. Had a great time working out linear dungeons with traps and bad guys who could be there through a long time, so elementals, automatons, undead, that sort of thing, but also making the challenges simple to bypass if you know how, but deadly if not, so the Knights could get through to the vault, but intruders would likely die trying. Players have had a blast, and I had great fun designing them too!
This is absolutely fantastic. Designing dungeons has always been a sort-of dread-filled task for me. I love having home-made dungeons and I'll spend a lot of time on them, usually. But there's always that niggling doubt whether it's good enough, or will fall flat, or the players finding them super boring. In addition to all the other things like does the layout make sense, what was this room/dungeon used for, how do I make this interesting, should I use traps, what about puzzles, is this big/small enough.... I always end up exhausted and really nervous about whether my players will *like* the damn thing. I had a player once who would grumble *every* single time they went into a dungeon and make comments like "oh we have to solve a puzzle. Again" or "it's always about finding the stupid lever to open the right door", and I was so, stressed out about it. I was working up my nerve to talk to him about it, when he pulled me aside and said "you DO know that it's only my character that's complaining, right? I love your dungeons". ... This is just a really long-winded way of saying that I love this video, and this will be a HUGE help for me. As soon as I have time, I'm diving into part 2. Thank you, Seth! ❤
I'm about to build a big temple dungeon, thus couldn't have come at a better time. Excellent advice, especially with the "make sure things that live here could actually live here" type advice.
I always make sure to include storage, sleeping quarters, and latrines into every dungeon I make. At least the ones that were once or currently meant to be inhabited. They create verisimilitude, provide places for PCs to hide or obtain equipment, and they fill up dungeon space. If there's a conspicuously vacant patch in the dungeon map between rooms, stick a latrine in there.
I would have given anything to have been your friend in high-school and college. You seem like you would've been the best dm. Me and my brother grew up on a farm, and he led me through many dungeons as a child, most of which he made up as we went. He had a wonderful imagination, just like you. Thanks for doing what you do.
Great video Seth! This was the one that made me realise I should definitely subscribe. I've seen videos of your before (mostly when looking up old modules to use for inspiration, and you always give great breakdowns on them) but I never subscribed for whatever reason. Love how detailed you make every section, without going so long as to get a bit tedious. I also love how you provide multiple examples for every point, to show that there's always more than one way to do things. I find that way too many people online stick with one example throughout their video which can be a bit weird when it doesn't match what you want at all. You manage to be broad enough to cover a wide range, but specific enough that the advice is still practical, which is a hard balance to master I find. Great stuff! Although I will say, your stairs confused me for a second lol. I've always seen the stairs drawn as the smaller end being the bottom, as that is what it would look like from a top down perspective (you know, the whole distant objects being smaller thing). Looking forward to the next part!
Thank you, Seth. A very, very useful video and just on time, too. May i ask if you're planning to do the similar series/video about the world building?
I'm not generally a fan of infra-vision as it's described in older editions (not that I like darkvision much either, for different reasons) but the concept of dwarves with infra-vision using materials that conduct heat differently to make art and the like is *fantastic*.
I knew it! Die Hard _is_ a Dungeon! Wow, we do a lot of the same things when designing dungeons! I believe in a sense of realism. I've even included privies in my dungeons. Where else is an Otyug going to hide?
In regards to habitation needs, N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God has animated zombies that operate a pump to keep the swamp-based dungeon from flooding.
I had a pair of skeletons watching a pond with small amphibians on the inlet side of one complex’ water supply. If the critters went belly-up one skeleton was to pull a lever shunting the stream off to a drain, and the other one was to go sound an alarm.
30:20 Y'know, I kind of like the idea of a dungeon where some or all of the 3D features make no sense once the PCs have seen enough of the dungeon. If it leads them to go back and poke at them to try to figure out what's going on - well, that's when they find the space-warped areas the dungeon builder created for this place and all the interesting stuff inside them. I had one dungeon back in the 70s where one of the hallways gradually got smaller as you walked north along it, shrinking you as you moved so it wasn't obvious, with a whole dead-end complex of teeny, tiny rooms at the end of it. When you eventually left the place going south embiggened you to normal, but you'd eventually wind up on the far side of the whole setup and your map would make it look like the tiny complex couldn't possibly have been where the map says it is.
Not the same, but how about a dungeon where some of the features make no sense by design, a' la the Winchester Mystery House. Doors to empty air, staircases that just end, not by some grand design but because the builder was barking mad.
Seth! Thank you for all you do. Probably one of my favorite TH-camrs - thank you very much for your traveller series; by a long shot, it's the best explanation of traveller rules on YT!
35:53 Honest, I played in a game back in the 80s where the DM described the dungeon as being made of cyclopean masonry and one of the other players (never having heard the term, which I admit is idiomatic) asked what he meant. The DM responded, absolutely deadpan, by telling him that every single giant block of stone had a single staring eye carved on it. Rest of the table broke up laughing, leaving the guy who'd asked totally confused until we explained the joke. On the rare occasions we get together to game these days we've all been working those stones into things, been going on for decades now - even the guy whose question started the gag.
Hi Seth! I hope you read this - a suggestion for a new video. I have a problem with my dungeons that it's very difficult to describe to the players the dimensions of the room or corridor that they are in - even if I describe it exactly, "it's a roughly shaped triangular room, 28 feet with at the base with the peak about 30 feet away from the opposite wall" ... that's kind of hard to visualize, and I'm sure it goes in one-ear and out the other. This is especially difficult when describing non-regular corridors: "the corridor goes for about 30 feet then veers slightly, about 15 degrees to the left before turning sharply 120 degrees to the right and narrowing from 10 feet wide to 5 feet wide". This is all just blah blah. It's kind of essential but totally non-interesting to the players. I've tried a few other options: - drawing it with wet-marker on the battle-map, which works okay but is tedious. - actually creating the map with grids on Inkscape, then printing them all out on A3 paper and cutting them out and placing them down. This is much better for atmosphere, but I can't do it with every single corridor, and it also "gives away" too much because they get to see stuff they shouldn't. - quickly sketching it out on a white-board (we play in an office). Works well, very quick but severely lacking in atmosphere. Even if I describe it, they're just all looking at the whiteboard as if it were a work presentation. Do you know a better way? I'd love to see a video on this.
I draw it out. Simply describing it is easier until you have to spend several minutes re-explaining how the place is laid out or where the two guards are standing. I just draw it out on the table and then they can apply the descriptions to the shape on the board. As far as videos, that was the Using Miniatures one I recently did.
Dungeons are like your world building, you need to know the why and how just as much as anything else. It seems to me that not a lot of people are wanting to put that kind of work into either though. Not sure if its just the quick and easy microwave generation that is getting into the hobby now or if it's just some of us are nerdier than the other to really get into how things function while most are just jumping into their DUHngeon. It happens, and the popular thing to say is, play it the way you want to or there's no wrong way to play. Which is true, but there's also a lot of dissatisfied people out there getting into the hobby who aren't getting the same care because of it. This is a great video I just don't see many taking notes on this to improve their games...for those who are, good on you and keep it up.
In designing a structure/dungeon, I like to consider how the denizens travel through it. Sure, it may be "neat" to have hidden, locked or trapped doors every other room but imagine how it would feel if there was a band of bandits spending their days there. Before a week was out they would start propping the doors open and disarming the traps rather than spend 20 minutes getting from the commissary to the lavatory. Think of a security building... it has secure locks at the entrances and between floors and at offices, sensitive rooms and labs but the rest of any given floor is generally open access.
I'm currently playing Shadowrun and in that it's really important to know that in the corporate bugdet useability, looks and even Fengshui come before security. And that a security device should not damage the building because buildings are expensive.
Funhouse dungeons! I once made a monster mash just for a laugh, but to also fit a story. It was an overgrown villa located in a tropical caldera. A normal villa, but inside was a strange array of creatures. Giant scorpion that was too big for the door to the room. Wild beasts. Animated Candlesticks even. All very confusing to the party. It was funhouse because I did just randomly select everything... as experiments being done by a sorcerer who was hiding out there.
On the topic of secret doors, the question is why have a secret door in the first place? In real construction secret doors served one of two purposes. The most common was that residents of manors didn't want to see servants--the secret doors were a system by which servants could fulfill their roles without being seen. Second, quick escape. You wanted a way out (either of the structure or of rooms) that your enemies weren't aware of. Either way they weren't random, they served a purpose. This can help determine secret door placement. If you're in a "dungeon" that was once intended as a residence, you could have secret doors to various high-status rooms in tucked-away areas allowing easy access if you can identify them. If it's meant as a more sinister location having means of escape can be justified--the people building it wanted to have a way out in case things went wrong.
I tend to build my dungeons based on what models or maps I have. I know how limiting that sounds, but it takes off most of the pressure from doing theatre of the mind description. I just get too into the "feeling" of the scene that I forget to add the relevant information to the players.
Speaking of social ecology one of my favorite dungeons, Return to White Plume Mountain, puts a whole ecology in white plume mountaun like the aftermath of the first adventurers wrecking things.
18:15 OOOH! Maybe that "open pit" underwater is actually a shaft to a lower level! It acts as a trap AND an egress to another area. I know I've seen that in some old school module but it's a great possibility.. This is a great video and I'm looking forward to part 2. I had created a campaign where the PCs were adventurers in a "new world" expedition. A sage/cartographer hired them, among other parties, to help survey a valley. It started with an overworld hike where they simply had to get to peaks on the mountains and map what they found on the way. They'd start discovering small caves with pueblo style dwellings, but some had entrances to the underground. Long story short, the PCs eventually find out the entire mountain range is actually an enormous space ark that landed here millennia ago, which explained the bizarre monsters and led to the discovery of old "magic" technology.
Back in 3rd edition D&D, I bought the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook. It was more of a supplement that had rules for PCs to buy and build their own stronghold. The book was a game changer for me. I was making all of the dungeon mistakes Seth talked about, not thinking 3 dimensionally with my dungeon design and not thinking logically about the dungeon layout. The Stronghold Builder's Guidebook really opened my eyes to the fact that strongholds and dungeons populated by humanoids should have enough rooms and beds for them all to sleep in and what not. My mind was just stuck in this sort of video game mentality where I mostly made linear dungeons with no thinking behind them.
Hello Seth Skorkowsky, Citcoin Official, and that really doesn't roll off the tongue. Probably Gonna need to establish myself a Spoken Alias for these situations. My RPG groups know me as Lime so perhaps that'll suit it better. Hello Seth Skorkowsky, Lime, and today I'm starting up a story for you. Not a horror story but a Campaign- I'll have to bust out a Longer story from the Vault for this series and give you the Comments you deserve, but I'll have to find one. Hmm. The 'Incomplete Constellation' campaign. This campaign came about because of one of the long time players at one of my tables, We'll Call him Jeff; or Chief Jeef if you prefer not to invoke the name of the 'perfect DM' Chief Jeef comes up to me and goes "Hey, Lime, The Cosmology rarely gets any attention in our games, can you run a Campaign with the Realms and Deities as the focus?" Me being the Kindly old Citrus that I am, sat down and immediately wrote two other unrelated campaigns that we played through first. Then I remembered what Chief Jeef wanted. I dreamed up the recipe for a 5e theme campaign that my players couldn't possibly De-theme. Each player had to be Descended from two Extraplanar Entities, One Major and One Minor, One Evil and One Good. Other than that they were free to create whatever characters they please. I'd even give them benefits based on their parents, A single free magic item and some powers later down the line. Also I modified the Standard Array and the Point Buy, so they could pump up their overall statline to help that Demigod feel. To paraphrase you, They were all Gonna be Demigods with Demigod Motives who do Demigod things. And their ultimate aim, the prize, the glue that held their ragtag band of rebellious Elysians together: The Incomplete Constellation, a new batch of stars that hadn't had their story written yet. I'll call my other three players 'Bill' 'Jemma' and 'Kathrine' Our session 0 had us introduced to 'Bill's Character: Ayingleheim (pronounced Jingleheim). Goliath. Ayingleheim was the Son of the Titan Gaia and a powerful Shadow-Ice Elemental known as 'Spring's Bane' . He was a Barbarian that fought with an enormous two-handed axe. The Axe was a Magical Weapon by the name of Altherway, a blade imbued with the spirit of frost and life anew. Any creature slain by Altherway had their soul sent to Hades' depths and their power reborn into a new being. (I let them give their items their names) It also did pretty wicked damage with a bit of bonus Cold damage. Jemma's character: Ilieptra (Pronounced Ill-E-Ep-Tra). Tiefling. She was the Daughter of Ra and the 'Succubus Queen', an entity my players had fought in another campaign. She was our group's Sorcerer and wielded the orb of Phantell-Kha, a magical sphere that guided her spells with the aid of a long-dead Pharaoh Wizard, and focused her inner light to allow her to see in the darkest of depths. Katherine's Character: Amayali (pronounced Amaya Lea). Dragonblood Elf. requires a bit more explanation because her Major Divine Parent won't be anyone you've heard of, because this is a God my players created during one of my campaigns, because they killed Lolth, a new evil elven god had to rise in her place: Amayali's mother is Makailisia, (pronounced Ma-kai-Li-See-A) Makailisia represented Elven Pride and Arrogance, Elves on top, all else below, that Elves should seize whatever they desire and 'elegantly conquer' anything that stands in their way. Her father was a Moon Dragon Greatwyrm, and thus a minor deity in his own right. Amayali herself was a Monk, and in terms of physical brute strength was the strongest in the group, her item was a pair of floral, embellished Elven bracers that helped her control her power. (buffed her To-hit and damage in line with a magic weapon, and gave her some extra Ki points because the base amount sucks in 5e.) Last but not least, Chief Jeef, the man who inspired this campaign. He brought to us: Valociel (Pronounced Valo-Ciel). Aasimar. Valociel was the only one of our Demigods that had Parents who didn't despise him, each other, or both. His father was the Angel General Kälbracht (random name, I wasn't expecting the players to ask) from one of our older campaigns and his Mother was Zariel, Kälbracht, in an attempt to redeem Zariel, had altered her memory to convince her she'd won the Blood War and permanently defeated the Abyss. This worked for countless years but Eventually she did find out that this did not actually happen, and returned to her position as Devil Lord of Avernus. but didn't resent Kälbracht for it. She genuinely enjoyed her 'leave of absence'. Valociel is a Paladin who wielded a magical Glaive (the Curved two-handed Spear, not the weird disk thing.) Called Swiftriver. Swiftriver could control low-ranked devils and angels, and did significant extra damage to Fiends and Undead. This comment is already really long, so I'll just say check out my other stories and analysis of my personal waking nightmare players in my other comments and until next time, you have a great day. You know, maybe letting 'Jingle'heim name his axe 'all the way' was something of an oversight. Bill was definitely pushing his luck with all the Christmas references now that I think about it.
Is he really? Seems like it's been about two-three per month like it has been for ages now. He's pretty steady really, usually something drops every 10-15 days, once in a while a bit longer. It's one of the things I like about his channel - reliable output but it never feels forced to me. With some creators you can really tell when they're just meeting a deadline, even if it's a personally imposed one.
I always felt that Arx Fatalis was a great introduction to dungeon design by presenting a whole open world withing a network of tunnels and dungeons. Where ever there's an outpost, there's a few hints at the ecology of the place, though in a very small scale. Playing it at several points of my life did wonders for my imagination when coming up with dungeons in TTRPG:s. And sure, I'm aware Ultima Underworld already introduced many of the stuff Arx did, but this was my foray into the genre.
A lot of good points made; two of which I would single out for particular attention… Leave space for empty space. Not only might that include storage rooms which could provide the PCs with a reasonably secure place to camp; but it should also mean bypasses, particularly if there are “puzzle” elements to the layout (not just puzzle rooms). I recently acquired the first adventure of the Dungeon magazine Scales of War campaign, which makes a big thing of the “puzzle” of finding all of the hostages - except they’re all basically out in the open in spaces the party have to transit through anyway… low traffic routes to these locations, where the players could sneak around recovering the hostages (even only some of them) would have added a lot to the game and made talking to the hostages far more valuable. Telegraph information somehow; if there’s a kissing maiden trap ahead then describe the weird stains on the walls, a rock fall trap? Cracked flagstones and so forth… don’t make the players search for traps in every square of your dungeon; don’t make them search every wall for secret doors… because if you don’t offer them some hints, they are quite capable of going back to basics and tapping everything with a ten foot pole - you won’t enjoy it, they won’t enjoy it and everyone will get frustrated. How you telegraph the information is up to you; if the secondary treasure chamber is behind the secret door then perhaps you keep it very subtle and behind a roll (or passive perception) and some Last Crusade style billowing cobwebs are all you give them, a hint that there’s something to search for. If the boss’s chambers and an insight into the story is the prize then maybe one of the fire-dogs is more worn and polished than the other. If half the dungeon is locked up behind it then perhaps grooves worn into the floor where ropes have been used over and over again, an anchor point in a nearby wall, almost everything short of a neon sign… Of course if you and your players are trying to recapture the days of ten foot poles then ignore all that - if they walk into a kissing maiden in that sort of game then it’s on them.
I usually start by figuring out the original purpose of the dungeon and then what happened since if anything. Sometimes I am a bit inspired by real places, like the Catacombs under Paris or the tomb of King Tut, that way I can be inspired by real floorplans and photographs (makes good handouts, we all love those). Once that is done I sketch out a very basic idea and then I finalize the build in either my Dvarven forged tiles or tiles (I use either tiles from Descent or Shadows of Brimstone, or sometimes I find some online and print them out), it depends a bit on the aesthetics I am going for. If there is less then 10 rooms I usually use Dwarven forged but for the massive multi layered dungeon it isn't worth the work of setting it up and putting all the tiles back after the game. I sometimes mix it up and have a couple of important rooms in full 3D (I could also add a single unimportant room in 3D just to mess with the players, but I rarely do that since if overused it loses it's impact). I tend to make a lot of changes during that last stage since when I actually puzzle out the entire thing I can what looks good and what might look good on paper but wont look as great when the players will see it. It might also run into some tiles that just look too good with the other stuff not to use. The 3D tiles do add a lot, like when the players can see that suddenly a room or corridor is a natural cave in an otherwise built dungeon, you know, show don't tell. Okay, I might have a bit of too much junk so my process might be depending a bit on that (hey, all that stuff was expensive, I bloody well is going to use it). I also really like visual aides while others might be more of the "theater of the mind" types. What I pick also depends a bit on where we are playing, if we are playing at my house I can spend a long time setting up everything before the game, if we play somewhere else I can't exactly spend hours building a perfect dungeon so then I either use very basic Descent tiles or I print out each room and corridors on my color laser printer. Drivethrough RPG have some nice tiles cheap, others can just be find free on the net and a little Microsoft paint can be used to edit and puzzle things out (including shrinking everything for the DM map). Of course it all depends on your own style, my dungeons is usually more focused on puzzles and traps the players need to figure out, if it is just monster encounters I rarely use 3D tiles like for a goblin lair or something like that. I do enjoy seeing the look on a new players face when they see a full 3D dungeon though, but remember to either cover up what they can't see yet (some cloth or cardboard does the work nicely, back cloth is a bonus) or to set each room or smaller sections on a magnetized board so you can bring out each new areas to reveal to the players as they discover it, it just makes things way more exciting then if you show them the entire map at the start, With Descent times or printed rooms I just have them sorted in a way so I quickly can set them up during play, don't let the players wait longer then a minute, preferably less then 30 seconds so the action keeps going. Anyways, that is my process but I think each game master have their own way of doing things and that is kinda the charm with RPGs. It is always worth to check out how other GMs do things but find your own style that works best for you and your players. Also, I don't play super often which allows me far more prep time then someone playing 2 sessions (or more) each week. If you want something super complex and don't have the time it might be a good idea to not use dungeons too often, mix in pre made modules or run another game with less preparation time by the side.
Temporary walls or obstructions made of trash; barriers or choke points created by collapses. Natural threats and dangers like flooding, collapsing cielings, cold or high winds. Pathways with features like very steep stairs, slippery ramps, or one way trips due to spikes like a car park. It's fun to bring the environment to life. :)
Fantastic work, Seth! These "common sense" construction foci always seemed important to me, but I also thought I was being too nerdy & detail-obsessed. Thanks for the validation, friend! Dungeons have to make some kinda sense.
As someone who prefers low magic worlds, dungeons have always felt very out of place, to the point where I can't really justify their existence. Because they're just so damn impractical, why dig out a mountain to house your base when you can just build a fortress in a valley and cutting down the time required to build it by several decades, not to mention the cost savings, even if you're using slaves, those slaves still need to be fed and housed and guarded. So that pretty much means that dungeons are either the work of alien mindsets who care not for wasted time or currency, or by someone mad enough to disregard those issues. Like the Egyptians had a whole religion to justify their tombs, why am I building this massive tomb you say? Oh because I'm gonna live there forever in the afterlife of course, me being a living god and all that seems reasonable, right? I don't know if other civs at the time were doing this, but I doubt any others were as elaborate, and heck not even the egyptian tombs were nearly as elaborate as movies would have us believe. And I know, technically a series of warehouses or a castle or what have you can still function as a dungeon, it's just not the same, you don't get the wildly cool but implausible things that a traditional (in the DnD sense) dungeon would provide. Same thing with things like traps, you wouldn't have something like a deadly trap if you live in the next room over, someone is going to forget themselves or get drunk and walk right into it. Why can the living room only be accesible through solving this twelve step puzzle involving moving statues around, beats me, it was like this when we moved in. What I mean by this is, if you have goblins on one side of the puzzle room, an unsolved puzzle, and then goblins in the rest of the dungeon on the other side, that would suggest either an alternate passage or that their everyday routine consists a lot of solving and resetting said puzzle. Unless you use undead or constructs who lack needs. And that's how we come to Dungeon real estate, okay so this section of the dungeon houses a big four legged beast of some sort and these three rooms here have goblins living in them. Okay great, but how much hunting ground would a predator need to stay alive for any longer periods of time? Intelligent creatures don't need a ton of space, they can always just go outside and hunt and raid and stuff, but an animal level intelligence creature of any sort can't exactly open doors at will, so unless it's kept alive as a pet, it's not going to survive if it's got a presumed hunting ground of a few rooms in a dungeon, not to mention access to fresh water and the accumulating dung. So any free roaming beast of any kind would suggest an exit, and the rooms occupied are more of a den that they can leave at will. Speaking of sustenance, any civ reaching city size needs grain as a basis for survival, there are no underground candidates for grain, mushrooms don't really cut it. Moss and that other variant that reindeer eats, I forgot the name, as well as mold and mycellium, are the only things that grow on rock, and they don't so much grow on rock as they grow on top of them, benefitting more from the absence of other flora than any real properties regarding the rock itself, like I don't think they gain minerals or anything from them. Revealing any air vents before they're inside the dungeon is just asking for trouble, they'll just block them and then the whole dungeon will need to come outside to greet them, spoiling potential surprises, and potentially causes a TPK from the sheer threat of numbers at once, though I like the idea of a chimney and lit fires as a ventilation system, it's very evocative but it's also a beacon asking for trouble sadly. I also think there's limitations regarding how far down air flow can reach without some pretty advanced tech going beyond medieval standards, heck even in skyscrapers they struggle with air pressure and flow.
I’m way too afraid to even try to GM a game so I’ll never need the information in this video. However, Seth is entertaining so I’m still gonna watch. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 👍🏻 🥇
Now... There is a problem in learning too much theory: The more you learn the more aware you become of even more you need to learn first! For GM-ing I will say. If you have played a few times, and thus have a vague idea of the basics of GM-ing, then do it! - Before you get to know so much that you are hampered by your knowledge.
Useful questions. What is the source of fresh air? What is the source of fresh water? What is the source of fresh food? What is the source of illumination? How much of the above do they have in storage? Where does each creature sleep? What does each creature do during the day?
One book that i sometimes fall back to is the old 1993 book 'Dungeons' from Central Casting. Pretty obscure and hard to find, but absolutely worth it. See it's not just a book to generate random dungeons, but also to create a random backstory for it. It also offers a few blank spots. traps, monsters and treasure are just tiered (ABCD etc) so you can still slot level apropriate content into your dungeon.
The infravision-based mosaic would also make a great puzzle where the players would have to line up different sections based on the heat each material gives off.
That's something that sounds cool, but isn't something to use for random groups or trying a generally published story unless you also add alternatives to accessing it. It also varies depending upon the edition in how it works... But it does remind me of the customized paint job that Ooryl used for his X-Wing in the Bacta War, for most species it just looked that color of glow in the dark stuff with the greenish yellow off white, if you could see ultra-violet, however, it looked neat.
Sir, at 23:50, what are those tiles? Are they commercially available? Learning a lot from your content,sir. Im going to apply a good deal of these concepts to my solo play. Cheers!
8:30 Like in "Slice of Death", when the party approaches the dungeon, and the thief says he's going to sleep inside and the others are like, no, we'll sleep in the forest where it's safe. The thief says yeah, but the dungeon has a 5' entrance, so the only things in there are that size.
@@theminerboy5694 Those utter bastards. Next thing you know, they will acquire the skill to walk softly. DM - "Surprise Round!" Us - "What? But we were listening!"
Loved this. Appreciated the insight into how to describe and think about dungeons. Though on review of your check list I am somewhat concerned about what is inhabiting your dungeon that requires a clown nursery.
Interesting. Just saw your comment over on Questing Beast. Guessing you looked at some of his vids as part of that "other folk's suggestions" research. EDIT: "I disagree that ALL dungeons need more than one entrance..." Oh yeah, that's Ben all right. All traps should be in plain sight too. Heard that one enough times on his channel. He's right about loops and connectivity, though. Multiple routes are good whenever you can justify it. Looking forward to the next part. Stretch it to more than two parts if you want, your takes on this stuff are always inspirational.
I probably saw some of Ben's vids on it. I've been assembling my talking points over the course of months, so I watched a lot of vids and blogs. The Mandatory Multiple Entrances is pretty common. As far as Traps. I'll be breaking it down into the various things that get called "Traps" but aren't. A known Trap, isn't a Trap. It's an Obstacle. Traps require both unknown factors and intent. An open pit of spikes isn't hiding, so it's an Obstacle. A hidden trap door concealing it makes it a Trap only to those who don't know where and where not to step. Then there's Threats, which are immediate peril that might be avoided (The walls are closing in!). Puzzles, which are simply Obstacles with a narrower list of solutions. Hazards, which are like Traps, but lack intent (rotted floorboards aren't trying to kill you. They're just rotted floorboards). And then the whole messy and wild world of Tricks.
"But what do they eat" is one of those key questions from writing advice that game masters/developers can learn a lot from.
Yep, if you can't figure that out it might be best to go for undeads or golems as your theme. I have done that a few times when I first designed the something cool but when looking on it, I just couldn't see how something could survive in there. Skeletons does not eat after all. :)
"how are fires put out?" and "where does the trash go?" are also important
@@LadyLunarSatine Well, not with goblins, they eat trash.... But we all heard the story about the DM who put a globe of annihilation down a hole and TPKed his entire party with it.
I am more worried where the smoke go then how they put out fires if they use fires in a cave or similar. I mean a bucket of water puts out the fire fine but have they constructed a chimney for a cave?
Anyways, a trash room is always nice, you can put in a gleaming trinket and the players will crawl through all the trash, smelling like (insert disgusting thing here) when they roll for spot hidden. "Wow, a ring worth 20 gold" and the entire party wont be let into town until they bathed in the cold river. ;)
I might be slightly evil.
🍄 🍻 🍯 🐶
Seth I would like to say that I will be trying my hand as a keeper for the haunting this Saturday. I'm very exited and thank you for introducing me to Call you Cthulhu
Best of luck with the game. I hope you all enjoy it is much as we have.
Good luck mate. You can do this!!! Have a blast !!!!
Good luck. It is a great game.
Have a ton of fun!!!
Thanks guys
I know it'd be more for the second part, but I remember playing a session in 2300 where we boarded an abandoned ship from an alien species. The airlock into the ship was kinda trapped by design. Due to how they saw colors, red was their color for safe and green was the danger color. So as we approached the airlock it was pressurized, but looked safe to open. It was just a small detail that helped to show the former owners were different from us.
Now that is good stuff. It reinforces the alien mindset of the designers and undermines any sense of familiarity while serving as a nice (ha) opener to knock the rust off the group and get them to either focus or freak out. That is elegant design.
I run an ancient aliens Pathfinder campaign, and one of the aliens has red as the "good" color and yellow as the "bad" one. Similar effects. Any little weird thing like that can give the players a sense of, well, alienness.
That's just mean. But great!
But I'm red / green colorblind so... Haha
A trick so great they included it in Dr. Strange, Multiverse of Madness. 😃 You were a visionary
The last time I played 2300AD was by GDW.
I thought I was the only person who knew about "Kingdom of the Dwarves". That books forever informed the depictions of dwarves in my campaigns.
There was that and one other, I believe, that REALLY dove deep into the details and had lots of cool pictures. It wasn't until I started organizing my notes for the video that it even occurred to me just how many dwarven towns and cities I've done over the years.
@@foo3234 it is not a D&D book
Really great book from my college years.
I can't help but click when you post because you have gotten me back into table top RPGs. My kids know DnD because of you, keep up the great work.
Secret doors are the best. I have very fond memories of a private school I attended that was in an old mansion that had a hidden staircase. It opened to a closet on the upper floor. Old houses sometimes have servant's quarters/wings that might be a bit concealed to allow unobtrusive movement.
good point!
They also had things like doors that just lead to outside or a sudden drop inside or outside for people trying to steal from them to fall down, Iam not kidding and didn’t believe it till I saw it personally. I saw still working ones and sealed one.
Went to a very old Catholic school that had a house for nuns to live in next to it, there was a under ground tunnel system with a pit that lead to who knows where and ways to get into the walls and fake roof and so much I didn’t even get a real look at. To top it off the old nuns house supposedly had a sister decided to “hang out” about 80-100 years prior to my time there. There was also a fallout shelter that connected to the public school next door and some of the houses had those and escape routes built into them.
If anyone gets a chance to check out old plantation houses in the south, some still have servant quarters and all the rest still they are not only educational but this weird hybrid of industry and a place people really lived their lives in and such a departure from todays way of life that they can give map makers a great perspective on things.
Old buildings are cool :D
"Marty, you aren't thinking 4th dimensionally!" is what I heard when Seth was talking about needing to think in 3 dimensions when it comes to planning your room layouts lol.
Resources for ideas: ancient Egyptian tomb complexes, De Re Metallica by Agricola (illustrated treatise on mining from 16th century,) The Pyrotechnia by Vannoccio Birunguccio; also, salt mines from the mountains around Salzburg.
Here's a like and a comment for the algorythm. Also thanks for the quality content, Seth, you're the man. Also the ork and the demon and the cthulhu god - everything GM has to be :D
It’s a great day when a long form Seth video is upload
@15:15 When Seth was describing reuse of the giant bronze doors, I saw one door suspended over a fire and used as a giant hibachi grill. Kobolds loudly running around prepping meals and delivering provisions in and out of the chamber.
😂 might have to steal that, it’s awesome! God bless you :)
Fantastic
Won't work. Bronze has a low melting point. Way to low to be held over fire and keep shape.
@@grzegorzmajewski. magic bronze then.
@@grzegorzmajewski. there isn’t just one ‘bronze’ there are different alloys with differing melt characteristics. So in a fantasy campaign there could easily be a bronze alloy with some alternative elements added with a higher melt and deformation point? I wouldn’t let something so prosaic as the melting point of bronze Eliminate a cool scene if there is any way around it.
I've been playing RPGs since 1979...and still found this not just entertaining but informative as well!
Thanks, Seth. I literally just saw a video where you said you're a badass dungeon designer. I think it was the first episode of the Modern Mythos podcast. I may be wrong. But I'm really looking forward to seeing this all play out. I love all your videos and I'm excited to read your books
Your guidelines for creating a dungeon are the same as mine. If there is an encounter in a dungeon, there needs to be a reason why it's there.
I did a Mummy’s Tomb dungeon for a 5e one-shot, heavily based on actual Egyptian tombs. Most *living* monsters wouldn't work - this tomb had just been discovered, nothing inside should be able to survive.
However, my solution was the inspiration from the Egyptians mummifying animals, including big cats. So I took the stats for a cheetah and templated it to be Mummified. So when two large Mummified Cheetahs appeared after being awoken by a trap, my players were caught off-guard. They loved it because it was a monster that they had *never* encountered before, and it presented a good challenge for them. It was also incredibly on theme AND there was a reason for them to be there.
That's what my dungeon was missing: the clown nursery!
Of course! It's so easy to see now in hindsight
A dungeon is the story. Build the dungeon to tell the story. Build it in the same way one builds the story.
I love making theme dungeons. Flipping through monster manuals and deciding what fits the vibe of the dungeon.
Half of this video (which I enjoy) is Seth spoiling The Tomb of Horrors without saying he’s spoiling the Tomb of Horrors.
Having been caught by the pit trap’s secret door myself, I am all for this passive aggression.
The moment i saw the playtime with ~40minutes and felt surge of good feelings thinking:"Yes, this is gonna be good." I love watching p&p GM's rambling about the things they love and espessially from Seth.
Wow... a Seth masterpiece.
With the room checklist at 34:48 I was very much expecting to see Seth list latrines. Clown nursery was a complete surprise
Yeah, that was a nice little Easter Egg :)
@@grindsaur oh, what does it reference? went over my head
@@otakuofmine I don't think it was a reference to anything particular - but it was a fun little gem for the observant viewers.
That shot of the 2nd edition catacombs guide brought back a sudden flush of memories for me. I gave TSR a LOT of my money back in the day... well my parent's money.
That’s the beauty of rpgs once you’ve got the basics and you’ve no money it forces you to be more creative or become a better shoplifter
Underground, water flowing through the earth accumulates. Getting rid of or controlling that water is a big part mining engineering. Flooded tunnels offer HUGE opportunities for underwater adventures. Uncorking backed up drain systems could be the key to wiping out powerful enemies, and weather above ground can impact game play as rainwater seeps through the rock/earth to inundate those below
I am currently running the pathinder 2e adventure path Abomination Vaults. One of the main features is an indestructible lighthouse artifact that extends down through all 9 underground levels above a shrine to an outer god. When the players find that circular room it gives them a refrence point for whete they are in this place.
Abomination Vaults is SO GOOD!! The only mega dungeon that I find intriguing all the way through!
A few years ago my sisters got me a book called "The Monsters Know What They're Doing" by Keith Ammann. Great book with great ideas on how encounters with different monsters might work in a dungeon or which dungeon types work with which monsters in which ways. Highly recommended.
Clown Nursery. I now have a theme for my next dungeon.
Thanks so much for making this video! I listen to a lot of these as I struggle with making good dungeons for my players, but I can seldom retain any knowledge or apply it in practice. But I find your way of presentation so much easier to follow. I really appreciate it!
One of the things I enjoy doing when I forget and make a secret door essential to a dungeon is to have the characters catch a denizen using that door we're going down what appears to be a dead end Passage
A few considerations specific to caves:
Caves are generally formed by erosion, so they tend to be very wet.
Never go into a cave when it's raining. Flooding is one of the biggest dangers in caves, not just because of the risk of drowning or deadly chemicals in the water, but because it can trap you, cutting off your oxygen supply. Pumping water out of mines was how the Industrial Revolution began.
Caves tend to be disorienting - places light has never touched, where a sound can keep echoing for days, aren't an environment most people can navigate by intuition.
There's a saying among spelunkers: "If it breathes, it leads." It means any passage with a draft isn't going to be a dead end. That doesn't necessarily mean it's traversible without a lot of work, nor that the air will be safe to breathe.
Dude, in my opinion you have the most consistent DM academy content on TH-cam. You’ve helped me turn my DM dreams into an amazing reality. Thank you for making awesome videos ❤️❤️❤️
I've always thought that the Sedlec Ossuary in Czech Republic would make for an amazing dungeon locale. The whole interior and much of the furnishings are made from tens of thousands of human skeletons. Imagine breaking into the headquarters of a cabal of necromancers and finding it full of this macabre yet still beautiful architecture that perfectly camouflages the enemy's minions.
In case anyone hadn't come across it yet, I'd also recommend the book "Image of the City". It's a short urban planning study/survey, and how people's spatial mental map building-blocks are paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks.
0:01 Seth, you had me at "dungeon."
Thanks Seth, this was very inspiring. Your insight is always helpful.
Clown nursery. 34:51 Nice room to consider.
"A Dwarven Mine that became a dwarven city then was abandoned and overrun by goblins. " So in summary let Dwarf Fortress (the game) generate a dungeon and its entire history for me - GOT IT!
One thing that I would suggest is that you also ignore a lot of MMO dungeons, at least more modern ones as they tend to be more linear in design because they tend to want to funnel the players in a specific direction, same with a lot of game dungeons because they are, normally a get from X to Y and looking neat along the way with side paths to extras.
No other channel has been so responsible in shaping me into the dm I am today, thank you Seth for your wealth of knowledge. Keep on keepin’ on!
I agree. Even when Seth is talking about stuff I do all the time he always has a hidden gem (or 6) about the theory behind it.
This video being an excellent example
Same. Seth and DungeonCraft are the reason I've started running games at conventions.
Solid gold as always.
Over the last couple years I've been running a campaign centred arround a knightly order that hid the parts of a powerful magical device in effectively "Dungeon Safes". First defence was no one knew they existed, but if you can locate them, then you have to find a way in, and through to the vault.
Had a great time working out linear dungeons with traps and bad guys who could be there through a long time, so elementals, automatons, undead, that sort of thing, but also making the challenges simple to bypass if you know how, but deadly if not, so the Knights could get through to the vault, but intruders would likely die trying.
Players have had a blast, and I had great fun designing them too!
This is absolutely fantastic.
Designing dungeons has always been a sort-of dread-filled task for me.
I love having home-made dungeons and I'll spend a lot of time on them, usually.
But there's always that niggling doubt whether it's good enough, or will fall flat, or the players finding them super boring.
In addition to all the other things like does the layout make sense, what was this room/dungeon used for, how do I make this interesting, should I use traps, what about puzzles, is this big/small enough....
I always end up exhausted and really nervous about whether my players will *like* the damn thing.
I had a player once who would grumble *every* single time they went into a dungeon and make comments like "oh we have to solve a puzzle. Again" or "it's always about finding the stupid lever to open the right door", and I was so, stressed out about it.
I was working up my nerve to talk to him about it, when he pulled me aside and said "you DO know that it's only my character that's complaining, right? I love your dungeons".
...
This is just a really long-winded way of saying that I love this video, and this will be a HUGE help for me.
As soon as I have time, I'm diving into part 2.
Thank you, Seth! ❤
I'm about to build a big temple dungeon, thus couldn't have come at a better time.
Excellent advice, especially with the "make sure things that live here could actually live here" type advice.
I always make sure to include storage, sleeping quarters, and latrines into every dungeon I make. At least the ones that were once or currently meant to be inhabited. They create verisimilitude, provide places for PCs to hide or obtain equipment, and they fill up dungeon space. If there's a conspicuously vacant patch in the dungeon map between rooms, stick a latrine in there.
Thank you Seth for your constant great advice and this video is instantly one of my favorites and I will play it again.
Haha phew!
Can't wait for Part 2!
a 40 min seth video? must be my birthday
I would have given anything to have been your friend in high-school and college. You seem like you would've been the best dm. Me and my brother grew up on a farm, and he led me through many dungeons as a child, most of which he made up as we went. He had a wonderful imagination, just like you. Thanks for doing what you do.
Great video Seth! This was the one that made me realise I should definitely subscribe. I've seen videos of your before (mostly when looking up old modules to use for inspiration, and you always give great breakdowns on them) but I never subscribed for whatever reason.
Love how detailed you make every section, without going so long as to get a bit tedious. I also love how you provide multiple examples for every point, to show that there's always more than one way to do things. I find that way too many people online stick with one example throughout their video which can be a bit weird when it doesn't match what you want at all. You manage to be broad enough to cover a wide range, but specific enough that the advice is still practical, which is a hard balance to master I find. Great stuff!
Although I will say, your stairs confused me for a second lol. I've always seen the stairs drawn as the smaller end being the bottom, as that is what it would look like from a top down perspective (you know, the whole distant objects being smaller thing).
Looking forward to the next part!
Thank you, Seth. A very, very useful video and just on time, too.
May i ask if you're planning to do the similar series/video about the world building?
I've drawn a lot of dungeons since 1977, and learned much of what you covered, yet still picked up some good points from your video. Thanks Seth.
I'm not generally a fan of infra-vision as it's described in older editions (not that I like darkvision much either, for different reasons) but the concept of dwarves with infra-vision using materials that conduct heat differently to make art and the like is *fantastic*.
I knew it! Die Hard _is_ a Dungeon!
Wow, we do a lot of the same things when designing dungeons! I believe in a sense of realism. I've even included privies in my dungeons. Where else is an Otyug going to hide?
In regards to habitation needs, N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God has animated zombies that operate a pump to keep the swamp-based dungeon from flooding.
I had a pair of skeletons watching a pond with small amphibians on the inlet side of one complex’ water supply.
If the critters went belly-up one skeleton was to pull a lever shunting the stream off to a drain, and the other one was to go sound an alarm.
30:20 Y'know, I kind of like the idea of a dungeon where some or all of the 3D features make no sense once the PCs have seen enough of the dungeon. If it leads them to go back and poke at them to try to figure out what's going on - well, that's when they find the space-warped areas the dungeon builder created for this place and all the interesting stuff inside them. I had one dungeon back in the 70s where one of the hallways gradually got smaller as you walked north along it, shrinking you as you moved so it wasn't obvious, with a whole dead-end complex of teeny, tiny rooms at the end of it. When you eventually left the place going south embiggened you to normal, but you'd eventually wind up on the far side of the whole setup and your map would make it look like the tiny complex couldn't possibly have been where the map says it is.
Not the same, but how about a dungeon where some of the features make no sense by design, a' la the Winchester Mystery House.
Doors to empty air, staircases that just end, not by some grand design but because the builder was barking mad.
Seth! Thank you for all you do. Probably one of my favorite TH-camrs - thank you very much for your traveller series; by a long shot, it's the best explanation of traveller rules on YT!
Probably?
Agreed! Watching the Traveller videos were the reason I bought the game. Such a great system
Did a dungeon dive one shot for thanksgiving. Really wish this was out while I was working on it haha! Great job as always seth! Keep it up!
35:53 Honest, I played in a game back in the 80s where the DM described the dungeon as being made of cyclopean masonry and one of the other players (never having heard the term, which I admit is idiomatic) asked what he meant. The DM responded, absolutely deadpan, by telling him that every single giant block of stone had a single staring eye carved on it.
Rest of the table broke up laughing, leaving the guy who'd asked totally confused until we explained the joke. On the rare occasions we get together to game these days we've all been working those stones into things, been going on for decades now - even the guy whose question started the gag.
Hi Seth! I hope you read this - a suggestion for a new video.
I have a problem with my dungeons that it's very difficult to describe to the players the dimensions of the room or corridor that they are in - even if I describe it exactly, "it's a roughly shaped triangular room, 28 feet with at the base with the peak about 30 feet away from the opposite wall" ... that's kind of hard to visualize, and I'm sure it goes in one-ear and out the other.
This is especially difficult when describing non-regular corridors: "the corridor goes for about 30 feet then veers slightly, about 15 degrees to the left before turning sharply 120 degrees to the right and narrowing from 10 feet wide to 5 feet wide".
This is all just blah blah. It's kind of essential but totally non-interesting to the players.
I've tried a few other options:
- drawing it with wet-marker on the battle-map, which works okay but is tedious.
- actually creating the map with grids on Inkscape, then printing them all out on A3 paper and cutting them out and placing them down. This is much better for atmosphere, but I can't do it with every single corridor, and it also "gives away" too much because they get to see stuff they shouldn't.
- quickly sketching it out on a white-board (we play in an office). Works well, very quick but severely lacking in atmosphere. Even if I describe it, they're just all looking at the whiteboard as if it were a work presentation.
Do you know a better way? I'd love to see a video on this.
I draw it out. Simply describing it is easier until you have to spend several minutes re-explaining how the place is laid out or where the two guards are standing. I just draw it out on the table and then they can apply the descriptions to the shape on the board.
As far as videos, that was the Using Miniatures one I recently did.
Dungeons are like your world building, you need to know the why and how just as much as anything else. It seems to me that not a lot of people are wanting to put that kind of work into either though. Not sure if its just the quick and easy microwave generation that is getting into the hobby now or if it's just some of us are nerdier than the other to really get into how things function while most are just jumping into their DUHngeon. It happens, and the popular thing to say is, play it the way you want to or there's no wrong way to play. Which is true, but there's also a lot of dissatisfied people out there getting into the hobby who aren't getting the same care because of it. This is a great video I just don't see many taking notes on this to improve their games...for those who are, good on you and keep it up.
Clear and concise, with great information and suggestions! Looking fwd. to part 2 already!
In designing a structure/dungeon, I like to consider how the denizens travel through it. Sure, it may be "neat" to have hidden, locked or trapped doors every other room but imagine how it would feel if there was a band of bandits spending their days there. Before a week was out they would start propping the doors open and disarming the traps rather than spend 20 minutes getting from the commissary to the lavatory. Think of a security building... it has secure locks at the entrances and between floors and at offices, sensitive rooms and labs but the rest of any given floor is generally open access.
I'm currently playing Shadowrun and in that it's really important to know that in the corporate bugdet useability, looks and even Fengshui come before security. And that a security device should not damage the building because buildings are expensive.
Funhouse dungeons! I once made a monster mash just for a laugh, but to also fit a story. It was an overgrown villa located in a tropical caldera. A normal villa, but inside was a strange array of creatures. Giant scorpion that was too big for the door to the room. Wild beasts. Animated Candlesticks even. All very confusing to the party.
It was funhouse because I did just randomly select everything... as experiments being done by a sorcerer who was hiding out there.
8:25
Dammit Seth! You just had to trigger my Arachnophobia! 😅
On the topic of secret doors, the question is why have a secret door in the first place? In real construction secret doors served one of two purposes. The most common was that residents of manors didn't want to see servants--the secret doors were a system by which servants could fulfill their roles without being seen. Second, quick escape. You wanted a way out (either of the structure or of rooms) that your enemies weren't aware of. Either way they weren't random, they served a purpose.
This can help determine secret door placement. If you're in a "dungeon" that was once intended as a residence, you could have secret doors to various high-status rooms in tucked-away areas allowing easy access if you can identify them. If it's meant as a more sinister location having means of escape can be justified--the people building it wanted to have a way out in case things went wrong.
I tend to build my dungeons based on what models or maps I have. I know how limiting that sounds, but it takes off most of the pressure from doing theatre of the mind description. I just get too into the "feeling" of the scene that I forget to add the relevant information to the players.
Speaking of social ecology one of my favorite dungeons, Return to White Plume Mountain, puts a whole ecology in white plume mountaun like the aftermath of the first adventurers wrecking things.
Thank you being my favorite RPG content creator. Love the books also. Looking forward to the next part in the series.
I usually just go with whatever feels fun. Like Krampus' castle, which my players will going through later this month as they fight to save Christams.
Ventilation...... now that is my kind of Dungeon design....and the lighting issue is close to my sensibility of an Engineer.
I always did forget about the clown nurseries, thanks for the tip!! 🙏
18:15 OOOH! Maybe that "open pit" underwater is actually a shaft to a lower level! It acts as a trap AND an egress to another area. I know I've seen that in some old school module but it's a great possibility..
This is a great video and I'm looking forward to part 2.
I had created a campaign where the PCs were adventurers in a "new world" expedition. A sage/cartographer hired them, among other parties, to help survey a valley. It started with an overworld hike where they simply had to get to peaks on the mountains and map what they found on the way. They'd start discovering small caves with pueblo style dwellings, but some had entrances to the underground. Long story short, the PCs eventually find out the entire mountain range is actually an enormous space ark that landed here millennia ago, which explained the bizarre monsters and led to the discovery of old "magic" technology.
Back in 3rd edition D&D, I bought the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook. It was more of a supplement that had rules for PCs to buy and build their own stronghold. The book was a game changer for me. I was making all of the dungeon mistakes Seth talked about, not thinking 3 dimensionally with my dungeon design and not thinking logically about the dungeon layout. The Stronghold Builder's Guidebook really opened my eyes to the fact that strongholds and dungeons populated by humanoids should have enough rooms and beds for them all to sleep in and what not. My mind was just stuck in this sort of video game mentality where I mostly made linear dungeons with no thinking behind them.
Clown nursery? Whelp, time to reduce this dungeon to rubble.
Hello Seth Skorkowsky, Citcoin Official, and that really doesn't roll off the tongue. Probably Gonna need to establish myself a Spoken Alias for these situations.
My RPG groups know me as Lime so perhaps that'll suit it better.
Hello Seth Skorkowsky, Lime, and today I'm starting up a story for you. Not a horror story but a Campaign- I'll have to bust out a Longer story from the Vault for this series and give you the Comments you deserve, but I'll have to find one.
Hmm.
The 'Incomplete Constellation' campaign.
This campaign came about because of one of the long time players at one of my tables, We'll Call him Jeff; or Chief Jeef if you prefer not to invoke the name of the 'perfect DM'
Chief Jeef comes up to me and goes
"Hey, Lime, The Cosmology rarely gets any attention in our games, can you run a Campaign with the Realms and Deities as the focus?"
Me being the Kindly old Citrus that I am, sat down and immediately wrote two other unrelated campaigns that we played through first.
Then I remembered what Chief Jeef wanted.
I dreamed up the recipe for a 5e theme campaign that my players couldn't possibly De-theme.
Each player had to be Descended from two Extraplanar Entities, One Major and One Minor, One Evil and One Good.
Other than that they were free to create whatever characters they please. I'd even give them benefits based on their parents, A single free magic item and some powers later down the line.
Also I modified the Standard Array and the Point Buy, so they could pump up their overall statline to help that Demigod feel.
To paraphrase you,
They were all Gonna be Demigods with Demigod Motives who do Demigod things. And their ultimate aim, the prize, the glue that held their ragtag band of rebellious Elysians together: The Incomplete Constellation, a new batch of stars that hadn't had their story written yet.
I'll call my other three players 'Bill' 'Jemma' and 'Kathrine'
Our session 0 had us introduced to
'Bill's Character: Ayingleheim (pronounced Jingleheim). Goliath. Ayingleheim was the Son of the Titan Gaia and a powerful Shadow-Ice Elemental known as 'Spring's Bane' .
He was a Barbarian that fought with an enormous two-handed axe. The Axe was a Magical Weapon by the name of Altherway, a blade imbued with the spirit of frost and life anew. Any creature slain by Altherway had their soul sent to Hades' depths and their power reborn into a new being. (I let them give their items their names)
It also did pretty wicked damage with a bit of bonus Cold damage.
Jemma's character: Ilieptra (Pronounced Ill-E-Ep-Tra). Tiefling. She was the Daughter of Ra and the 'Succubus Queen', an entity my players had fought in another campaign. She was our group's Sorcerer and wielded the orb of Phantell-Kha, a magical sphere that guided her spells with the aid of a long-dead Pharaoh Wizard, and focused her inner light to allow her to see in the darkest of depths.
Katherine's Character: Amayali (pronounced Amaya Lea). Dragonblood Elf. requires a bit more explanation because her Major Divine Parent won't be anyone you've heard of, because this is a God my players created during one of my campaigns, because they killed Lolth, a new evil elven god had to rise in her place:
Amayali's mother is Makailisia, (pronounced Ma-kai-Li-See-A) Makailisia represented Elven Pride and Arrogance, Elves on top, all else below, that Elves should seize whatever they desire and 'elegantly conquer' anything that stands in their way.
Her father was a Moon Dragon Greatwyrm, and thus a minor deity in his own right.
Amayali herself was a Monk, and in terms of physical brute strength was the strongest in the group, her item was a pair of floral, embellished Elven bracers that helped her control her power. (buffed her To-hit and damage in line with a magic weapon, and gave her some extra Ki points because the base amount sucks in 5e.)
Last but not least, Chief Jeef, the man who inspired this campaign. He brought to us: Valociel (Pronounced Valo-Ciel). Aasimar. Valociel was the only one of our Demigods that had Parents who didn't despise him, each other, or both.
His father was the Angel General Kälbracht (random name, I wasn't expecting the players to ask) from one of our older campaigns and his Mother was Zariel,
Kälbracht, in an attempt to redeem Zariel, had altered her memory to convince her she'd won the Blood War and permanently defeated the Abyss.
This worked for countless years but
Eventually she did find out that this did not actually happen, and returned to her position as Devil Lord of Avernus. but didn't resent Kälbracht for it. She genuinely enjoyed her 'leave of absence'.
Valociel is a Paladin who wielded a magical Glaive (the Curved two-handed Spear, not the weird disk thing.) Called Swiftriver. Swiftriver could control low-ranked devils and angels, and did significant extra damage to Fiends and Undead.
This comment is already really long, so I'll just say check out my other stories and analysis of my personal waking nightmare players in my other comments and until next time, you have a great day.
You know, maybe letting 'Jingle'heim name his axe 'all the way' was something of an oversight. Bill was definitely pushing his luck with all the Christmas references now that I think about it.
Man you are doing so many videos recently. Holy cow!
Is he really? Seems like it's been about two-three per month like it has been for ages now. He's pretty steady really, usually something drops every 10-15 days, once in a while a bit longer. It's one of the things I like about his channel - reliable output but it never feels forced to me. With some creators you can really tell when they're just meeting a deadline, even if it's a personally imposed one.
I always felt that Arx Fatalis was a great introduction to dungeon design by presenting a whole open world withing a network of tunnels and dungeons. Where ever there's an outpost, there's a few hints at the ecology of the place, though in a very small scale. Playing it at several points of my life did wonders for my imagination when coming up with dungeons in TTRPG:s.
And sure, I'm aware Ultima Underworld already introduced many of the stuff Arx did, but this was my foray into the genre.
A lot of good points made; two of which I would single out for particular attention…
Leave space for empty space. Not only might that include storage rooms which could provide the PCs with a reasonably secure place to camp; but it should also mean bypasses, particularly if there are “puzzle” elements to the layout (not just puzzle rooms). I recently acquired the first adventure of the Dungeon magazine Scales of War campaign, which makes a big thing of the “puzzle” of finding all of the hostages - except they’re all basically out in the open in spaces the party have to transit through anyway… low traffic routes to these locations, where the players could sneak around recovering the hostages (even only some of them) would have added a lot to the game and made talking to the hostages far more valuable.
Telegraph information somehow; if there’s a kissing maiden trap ahead then describe the weird stains on the walls, a rock fall trap? Cracked flagstones and so forth… don’t make the players search for traps in every square of your dungeon; don’t make them search every wall for secret doors… because if you don’t offer them some hints, they are quite capable of going back to basics and tapping everything with a ten foot pole - you won’t enjoy it, they won’t enjoy it and everyone will get frustrated. How you telegraph the information is up to you; if the secondary treasure chamber is behind the secret door then perhaps you keep it very subtle and behind a roll (or passive perception) and some Last Crusade style billowing cobwebs are all you give them, a hint that there’s something to search for. If the boss’s chambers and an insight into the story is the prize then maybe one of the fire-dogs is more worn and polished than the other. If half the dungeon is locked up behind it then perhaps grooves worn into the floor where ropes have been used over and over again, an anchor point in a nearby wall, almost everything short of a neon sign… Of course if you and your players are trying to recapture the days of ten foot poles then ignore all that - if they walk into a kissing maiden in that sort of game then it’s on them.
There are no Rules, only Tools - Brandon Sanderson
I usually start by figuring out the original purpose of the dungeon and then what happened since if anything. Sometimes I am a bit inspired by real places, like the Catacombs under Paris or the tomb of King Tut, that way I can be inspired by real floorplans and photographs (makes good handouts, we all love those).
Once that is done I sketch out a very basic idea and then I finalize the build in either my Dvarven forged tiles or tiles (I use either tiles from Descent or Shadows of Brimstone, or sometimes I find some online and print them out), it depends a bit on the aesthetics I am going for. If there is less then 10 rooms I usually use Dwarven forged but for the massive multi layered dungeon it isn't worth the work of setting it up and putting all the tiles back after the game. I sometimes mix it up and have a couple of important rooms in full 3D (I could also add a single unimportant room in 3D just to mess with the players, but I rarely do that since if overused it loses it's impact).
I tend to make a lot of changes during that last stage since when I actually puzzle out the entire thing I can what looks good and what might look good on paper but wont look as great when the players will see it. It might also run into some tiles that just look too good with the other stuff not to use.
The 3D tiles do add a lot, like when the players can see that suddenly a room or corridor is a natural cave in an otherwise built dungeon, you know, show don't tell.
Okay, I might have a bit of too much junk so my process might be depending a bit on that (hey, all that stuff was expensive, I bloody well is going to use it). I also really like visual aides while others might be more of the "theater of the mind" types. What I pick also depends a bit on where we are playing, if we are playing at my house I can spend a long time setting up everything before the game, if we play somewhere else I can't exactly spend hours building a perfect dungeon so then I either use very basic Descent tiles or I print out each room and corridors on my color laser printer.
Drivethrough RPG have some nice tiles cheap, others can just be find free on the net and a little Microsoft paint can be used to edit and puzzle things out (including shrinking everything for the DM map).
Of course it all depends on your own style, my dungeons is usually more focused on puzzles and traps the players need to figure out, if it is just monster encounters I rarely use 3D tiles like for a goblin lair or something like that.
I do enjoy seeing the look on a new players face when they see a full 3D dungeon though, but remember to either cover up what they can't see yet (some cloth or cardboard does the work nicely, back cloth is a bonus) or to set each room or smaller sections on a magnetized board so you can bring out each new areas to reveal to the players as they discover it, it just makes things way more exciting then if you show them the entire map at the start,
With Descent times or printed rooms I just have them sorted in a way so I quickly can set them up during play, don't let the players wait longer then a minute, preferably less then 30 seconds so the action keeps going.
Anyways, that is my process but I think each game master have their own way of doing things and that is kinda the charm with RPGs. It is always worth to check out how other GMs do things but find your own style that works best for you and your players. Also, I don't play super often which allows me far more prep time then someone playing 2 sessions (or more) each week. If you want something super complex and don't have the time it might be a good idea to not use dungeons too often, mix in pre made modules or run another game with less preparation time by the side.
As a DM who's been running games and Doodling dungeons for a couple decades, I learned a ton! What a great video!
Temporary walls or obstructions made of trash; barriers or choke points created by collapses. Natural threats and dangers like flooding, collapsing cielings, cold or high winds. Pathways with features like very steep stairs, slippery ramps, or one way trips due to spikes like a car park. It's fun to bring the environment to life. :)
YESSSSSS!!!! I’ve wanted this video forever!!
Fantastic work, Seth!
These "common sense" construction foci always seemed important to me, but I also thought I was being too nerdy & detail-obsessed. Thanks for the validation, friend! Dungeons have to make some kinda sense.
As someone who prefers low magic worlds, dungeons have always felt very out of place, to the point where I can't really justify their existence. Because they're just so damn impractical, why dig out a mountain to house your base when you can just build a fortress in a valley and cutting down the time required to build it by several decades, not to mention the cost savings, even if you're using slaves, those slaves still need to be fed and housed and guarded.
So that pretty much means that dungeons are either the work of alien mindsets who care not for wasted time or currency, or by someone mad enough to disregard those issues. Like the Egyptians had a whole religion to justify their tombs, why am I building this massive tomb you say? Oh because I'm gonna live there forever in the afterlife of course, me being a living god and all that seems reasonable, right? I don't know if other civs at the time were doing this, but I doubt any others were as elaborate, and heck not even the egyptian tombs were nearly as elaborate as movies would have us believe.
And I know, technically a series of warehouses or a castle or what have you can still function as a dungeon, it's just not the same, you don't get the wildly cool but implausible things that a traditional (in the DnD sense) dungeon would provide. Same thing with things like traps, you wouldn't have something like a deadly trap if you live in the next room over, someone is going to forget themselves or get drunk and walk right into it. Why can the living room only be accesible through solving this twelve step puzzle involving moving statues around, beats me, it was like this when we moved in. What I mean by this is, if you have goblins on one side of the puzzle room, an unsolved puzzle, and then goblins in the rest of the dungeon on the other side, that would suggest either an alternate passage or that their everyday routine consists a lot of solving and resetting said puzzle. Unless you use undead or constructs who lack needs.
And that's how we come to Dungeon real estate, okay so this section of the dungeon houses a big four legged beast of some sort and these three rooms here have goblins living in them. Okay great, but how much hunting ground would a predator need to stay alive for any longer periods of time? Intelligent creatures don't need a ton of space, they can always just go outside and hunt and raid and stuff, but an animal level intelligence creature of any sort can't exactly open doors at will, so unless it's kept alive as a pet, it's not going to survive if it's got a presumed hunting ground of a few rooms in a dungeon, not to mention access to fresh water and the accumulating dung. So any free roaming beast of any kind would suggest an exit, and the rooms occupied are more of a den that they can leave at will.
Speaking of sustenance, any civ reaching city size needs grain as a basis for survival, there are no underground candidates for grain, mushrooms don't really cut it. Moss and that other variant that reindeer eats, I forgot the name, as well as mold and mycellium, are the only things that grow on rock, and they don't so much grow on rock as they grow on top of them, benefitting more from the absence of other flora than any real properties regarding the rock itself, like I don't think they gain minerals or anything from them.
Revealing any air vents before they're inside the dungeon is just asking for trouble, they'll just block them and then the whole dungeon will need to come outside to greet them, spoiling potential surprises, and potentially causes a TPK from the sheer threat of numbers at once, though I like the idea of a chimney and lit fires as a ventilation system, it's very evocative but it's also a beacon asking for trouble sadly. I also think there's limitations regarding how far down air flow can reach without some pretty advanced tech going beyond medieval standards, heck even in skyscrapers they struggle with air pressure and flow.
34:49 excuse me mister skorkowsky but… clown nursery?
I mean, I know Seth likes horror, but this was a bit too much!
Clown nursery! Of course! That's why my dungeons suck-because I always forget to put in a clown nursery! Thanks, Seth!
I’m way too afraid to even try to GM a game so I’ll never need the information in this video. However, Seth is entertaining so I’m still gonna watch. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 👍🏻 🥇
Now... There is a problem in learning too much theory: The more you learn the more aware you become of even more you need to learn first!
For GM-ing I will say. If you have played a few times, and thus have a vague idea of the basics of GM-ing, then do it! - Before you get to know so much that you are hampered by your knowledge.
Useful questions.
What is the source of fresh air?
What is the source of fresh water?
What is the source of fresh food?
What is the source of illumination?
How much of the above do they have in storage?
Where does each creature sleep?
What does each creature do during the day?
One book that i sometimes fall back to is the old 1993 book 'Dungeons' from Central Casting. Pretty obscure and hard to find, but absolutely worth it. See it's not just a book to generate random dungeons, but also to create a random backstory for it. It also offers a few blank spots. traps, monsters and treasure are just tiered (ABCD etc) so you can still slot level apropriate content into your dungeon.
The infravision-based mosaic would also make a great puzzle where the players would have to line up different sections based on the heat each material gives off.
That's something that sounds cool, but isn't something to use for random groups or trying a generally published story unless you also add alternatives to accessing it. It also varies depending upon the edition in how it works...
But it does remind me of the customized paint job that Ooryl used for his X-Wing in the Bacta War, for most species it just looked that color of glow in the dark stuff with the greenish yellow off white, if you could see ultra-violet, however, it looked neat.
Sir, at 23:50, what are those tiles? Are they commercially available? Learning a lot from your content,sir. Im going to apply a good deal of these concepts to my solo play. Cheers!
Those particular tiles, I believe, were the result of a Google Image search.
DERINKUYU IN TURKEY. underground medieval city. 15 levels.
34:53 Clown Nursery - what do I win?
Try a half flooded dungeon of 🧜🏻♀️ vs. Koalinths, and you will have fun.
"Clown Nursery"??? Officially the creepiest dungeon room ever.
I waited the whole time to see Jack. It's odd to see a video without the whole caste and crew there
Ever since they unionized I have to give them breaks.
Trying my hand at DM'ing in the near future so this video was super helpful
Room list: One of them is not like the others. Clown Nursery, it's the Clown Nursery.
8:30 Like in "Slice of Death", when the party approaches the dungeon, and the thief says he's going to sleep inside and the others are like, no, we'll sleep in the forest where it's safe. The thief says yeah, but the dungeon has a 5' entrance, so the only things in there are that size.
What if the monsters know how to crouch though?
@@theminerboy5694 Those utter bastards. Next thing you know, they will acquire the skill to walk softly.
DM - "Surprise Round!"
Us - "What? But we were listening!"
Loved this. Appreciated the insight into how to describe and think about dungeons. Though on review of your check list I am somewhat concerned about what is inhabiting your dungeon that requires a clown nursery.
Maybe PCs?
You know...
Player Clowns.
Interesting. Just saw your comment over on Questing Beast. Guessing you looked at some of his vids as part of that "other folk's suggestions" research.
EDIT: "I disagree that ALL dungeons need more than one entrance..." Oh yeah, that's Ben all right. All traps should be in plain sight too. Heard that one enough times on his channel. He's right about loops and connectivity, though. Multiple routes are good whenever you can justify it.
Looking forward to the next part. Stretch it to more than two parts if you want, your takes on this stuff are always inspirational.
I probably saw some of Ben's vids on it. I've been assembling my talking points over the course of months, so I watched a lot of vids and blogs. The Mandatory Multiple Entrances is pretty common.
As far as Traps. I'll be breaking it down into the various things that get called "Traps" but aren't. A known Trap, isn't a Trap. It's an Obstacle. Traps require both unknown factors and intent. An open pit of spikes isn't hiding, so it's an Obstacle. A hidden trap door concealing it makes it a Trap only to those who don't know where and where not to step. Then there's Threats, which are immediate peril that might be avoided (The walls are closing in!). Puzzles, which are simply Obstacles with a narrower list of solutions. Hazards, which are like Traps, but lack intent (rotted floorboards aren't trying to kill you. They're just rotted floorboards). And then the whole messy and wild world of Tricks.
@@SSkorkowsky Those all sound like reasonable and useful definitions.
Great video. Glad there's another coming up