Tips for Running Large Dungeons with Complex Maps in D&D
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ก.ย. 2024
- Have you ever been frustrated with running large dungeons in Dungeons & Dragons? Perhaps not sure about the best way to prepare for them? In this video, I'll discuss how I run large dungeons with complex maps in D&D and give some tips for dungeon masters.
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"Hey, idiot! This is why everything takes so long! Remember the dungeon we're in?"
"Ha ha ha ha...What dungeon?"
The barbarian's had some good punch lines, but that one takes the cake.
I'm really glad you like that dude. In all honesty when I watched today's skit this morning I was kind of thinking the skit was a little flat and maybe not as good as other ones. But hey if you're happy that makes me happy. :-)
@@theDMLair Honestly, they're going to have to get a lot worse than that to be boring. It was longer than usual, but I think the idea that this whole gang of Luke clones gets together once a month to record skits, but the barbarian hasn't noticed, is amazing. Also that the rogue knows that the dungeon-breaking spells video exists, but nobody else does because they didn't film a skit. Keep up the good work!
I’ve had a group draw the map as I describe it on a graph paper with great results. I will say they are player of the 80s so maybe a bit more used to that style.
Yes I think it was much more common in the old days for players to draw Maps. I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm just saying that take a lot more time than at the dungeon master just does it himself. So you're using Gametime to draw the map and for some groups that might not be the best use of their game time. That is some groups might prefer to use that time doing other things then drawing a map. But if your group likes that then Rock on. Because for some people that's part of the game and they do enjoy it.
Thank you! I’ve dm’d a few times, but I’m running my first full home brew campaign. I had no idea how to navigate the map with the players. This was exactly what I needed
R20 is really useful for large dungeons.
One thing I keep doing is adding text on the GM layer (only I can see) on each room, it makes sure I don't forget important details nor have to look up trap damage/DC
Great idea, i think i will start doing this from now on. Just had a lackluster boss fight all because i missed my opportunity to counterspell an incoming Hold Monster and thats all she wrote... a "Dont forget Counterspell" note would have been quite helpful
I should have seen this video before DMing a huge dungeon, my Wizard player used Etherealness when he was done exploring 2min into the dungeon, and the session ended in 5min right after it.
The skit character multiverse deep delve when?
Could you give me more tips for run big dungeons, I want to use the dungeon of the mad mage!!
What kind of problems and issues do you run into when you're running large dungeons? Might be a good idea to pop over to my Discord and at mentioned me with your response over there. That will ensure that I actually see it. A lot of times people leave me comments here and they don't actually come through to the app that I use.
I had an awful experience with running the Sunless Citadel and wanted tips to improve for a potential followup adventure. Then you mention Against the Giants from the same book.
I feel like, if I pick up a module, it's because I want to spend less time preparing, not more. I ended up cutting the adventure short after the pc's found "the way down to the next floor" and then convinced an npc to take them to the boss. They attracted so much attention and just kept amassing enemies that followed them into the boss's chamber. They were still lvl 1 at the time and had to flee. I had no prior experience with large dungeons and the book didn't give me any help. How am I supposed to run this?
We're running a homebrew adventure, it's a lot easier and the players are happier.
I feel like part of the problem here is that the players had the idea of talking their way to the final boss. And they didn't consider the potential ramifications of doing so. Like what did they think was going to happen if they talk the way to the final boss have Bunches of enemies around them and a whole dungeon full of enemies behind them and then the boss decides that he's better off killing them? That's just a really bad bad situation to get yourself into. I don't know that there is a better way to show the players the futility of that than having it happen to them and letting them experience how bad of an idea can be. Now my turn out okay possibly but only if they play their cards perfectly and the boss is somehow convinced to what stop being evil? Stop doing bad things? I mean it's possible what can the players pulled off? And then you have to consider other things as well. Let's say that you prepare an entire module to run with them. And they somehow convinced one guy the beginning to take them to the final bad boss at the end of module. And then they convince the boss to stop all of the evil stuff he's doing. Did your players just overcome the entire module in a single game session? Maybe. Now was that fun in satisfying to them? Or will the players kind of feel like they skip the entire game? I feel like some players might enjoy that and think it's really clever of them. Other players will feel like they just missed out on the entire module. And how will the dungeon master feel if you prepared that entire module? You see there's a lot of stuff going on here. There are a lot of things to consider. I feel like this sort of thing where a player convinces someone to take him to the final boss and then convinces that boss to stop being evil and thereby defeating the entire module or Adventure easily is something that sounds really really cool I'm Reddit posts and other places. But I don't know that it's super satisfying for players. Maybe it is Maybe I'm Wrong.
So I don't think that I gave you an actual answer in my long rambling discourse there. I just brought up a lot of considerations and lots of things to think about. I'm not sure that there is a right answer. There's only the answer that a particular dungeon master chooses. I usually give my players freedom to think of out of the box solutions to problems I just talked in your way to the final boss. But I don't take it easy on them either. If they talk their way to the final boss and then things go south and the entire dungeon comes down on them then I make them live with those consequences. That's just the way I do it. Some could say that that's being a jerk. But what's the alternative? Allowing them to just beat the entire dungeon with a clever argument and a few persuasion checks? That doesn't sound like a lot of fun either? But that's just me.
@@theDMLair I do it the same way. The wizard in the group just lost his leg to a purple worm (It wasn't a combat, but a skill challenge to escape it. Success at a cost) But yeah, there's always something that you could've done differently and it's usually easier to spot in hindsight. One of the pc's mention from time to time they should go back and thwart the bad guy's plans. Which is a possibility, but the adventure will have changed and be written more to my style.
They were exceptionally focused in what they were there to do. I ran the adventure as is and I think their reasoning was that if they were there to kill said boss, then everything else is "optional" and a waste of time. But the dungeon is designed from lvl 1 to 3. Everything not related to the goal was ignored. A challenge I've had with other groups as well.
Anyway, I think we're not too dissimilar. Clever solutions should be rewarded, but the players also have to figure the consequences out when their plans derail. I like this as a player as well, this feeling that my actions can have an impact on the world.
Just roll a dice and choose the next room
Protip fpr the minmap/hud: Draw it out ahead of time and then cut it up into each room. Hand your players a new room when they enter it and let them piece the map together. It'll give them the feeling of building their own map and easily track their progression. I'd honestly recommend doing this for smaller dungeons too.
Oh I like that! Saves me the hassle of covering up a huge map with black paper too!
That's a great idea, you could tweak each cut piece by the normal vision your party uses
You could always print out the maps instead of drawing them if you want to save time during the session. I use black pieces of card to cover areas they haven't been yet.
Interesting... Might try that. 😁
I have it easy. My DoTMM group is online, so I just upload the map.
Feel you on the preparation, though.
In my case, between the dm I take turns dming with and me, we developed a desktop app that allows us to show the map with a fog of war element on top`of it and the dm can slowly uncover it as the party explores the dungeon, so it's like a virtual table top, but local in the group it's known as the Dungeon Master Squire as it has another set of tools to create content with.
I also pre print mine. Usually about 5 bucks for 24*32 print black and white. Also you can by easel pad sized paper with grids and pre draw maps on them and use the black paper trick.
I do the same thing except I draw my own maps on a battle map and use printer paper to cover sections they haven't been in
When my group "found the stars to the 2nd level" during a dungeon crawl, the DM just asked us to ignore it for now, and come back to it later. No one had a problem with that, and we just continued to explore the 1st level.
I mean that's cool right if it works. In my case the players came up with a really clever way to go to the boss to talk to him. Because of social interaction they just killed it. And so they they pretty much got to go to the second level there was no way around it. The only way to ask them not to go down to the second level of would be to ignore all of the clever work they put into role-playing. But yeah if you can just ask him to ignore it then that's better for sure.
my group plays too many video games, so we're always "hmmm, that looks like the way out but we haven't explored everything yet, so let's come back"
i had this happen in one of my games as well. I just said "It's locked" and that they would need to find the key.
he clearly had not read about next level yet, OR you had missed soemthign he needed you to find, I woudl just put magical seal on it, and you need a item to Open it.
Welcome to the dungeon, we got fun and games,
Learn to navigate, my friend, or you'll feel some pain!
There is some treasure here you'll find, when you get in deep
You'll bag it up, and turn to leave, then you'll all say (BLEEP!!)
In the dungeon, welcome to my dungeon!
Watch me lower your......HP, P...P!
Uh, uh..wanna hear your healer scream!
You know where you are? You're in the trapped room, baby!
You're gonna diiiiiie!!
Welcome to the dungeon, take it room by room
If you want that shiny stuff, you're gonna face your doom!
And you got a very strong pally, with plenty of AC
But it won't mean a thing, 'cause the rust monster's free!
In the dungeon, runnin' through my dungeon!
I,I...I'm going for TKP!
(...I had too much fun writing this!)
Awesome! 😁
It’s gonna bring you down!
This song is great but I think it’s tpk not tkp
This comment does not have anywhere near enough thumbs up.
As someone who very frequently runs large dungeons, my number one tip is take your modules and throw them in the garbage.
My thought process:
If I can't fit it on one sheet of graph paper, it's really not worthwhile
That is a 100% legit way to do it. I've created several dungeons that way and man doesn't make my life easy.
good idea. I usually just scale the map down or do sections to make a sort of multi-section campaign.
Ultra linear dungeons may be slightly easier to run, byt they're terrible design and immersion destroying for a lot of players the moment they realize they're being funneled from one scene to the next. Linear works, even mandatory, in some cases but I'm very careful in using that method of dungeon building.
@@erad3035 Who said anything about linearity? Small =! linear.
@@Prengle to be frank, I'm not sure why my reply is here. I think I was responding to someone else and put it in the wrong place.
Digital dnd works for the second part as well, you can have all your monsters and traps on the dm layer, and brief notes, at least on roll20
Yes that's what I do. I put all of my monsters on the map outside of the dynamic lighting and then when I need them I drag them into the room.
If you are going to run a large dungeon devide it up it several parts with their own stories and themes that eventually feed back into an overarching theme and story
You must be reading my campaign notes. My players are currently in my version of Undermountain, and about to hit a big, sprawling cavern layer with many directions to go.
You're always posting the content I need when I need it.
Oh no he's on to me... No, no, I did not hack your computer...
I swear. 😬
Always happy to help! 😁
In the early editions of the game, "The Mapper" was an important role in the party.
We stuck to that as a hard and fast "Rule" for weeks, probably even months, when I first started playing...
It was only when my dungeon developed a "cave system" level that I decided that it was not going to work. The whole "the dungeon opens into a 30 feet by 30 feet square room, with a door in the middle of the north and east walls..." stuff was OK, even if there was often discrepancy over "the tunnel leads 40 feet at which point it turns to the left," type descriptions. ("So... is it 40 feet long with the turn starting 30' down the left wall, or 50 feet long with the tunnel turning at the 40 feet mark???")
Caverns was a whole new level of crazy...
Me: "The tunnel curves back by about... er 30 degrees... then narrows to about 5 feet for about 6 feet before twisting back round to the left in a sort of... horseshoe shape that's about 40 feet in total, broadening out again to about 10 feet...."
Mapper: "I quit! You can take this map, roll it tight and shove it up..."
I've been drawing maps ever since. I like to spend time playing the game...
I disagree. I had players mapping dungeons for years, this is how it was commonly done back in the 70's. When the corridors don't match up, or they have to flee a monster and then try and fill in the area they just fled across without close observation, this messes up their map. Just like what would happen in real life. Unsurprisingly, becoming hopelessly lost, or being massacred by monsters they already avoided and then forgot were there, etc. is not only very entertaining for the DM, but also teaches them how to make a map properly, since it's easier than rolling up a new character to just make an accurate map. If they have questions while mapping, they show me the map and ask a question like, "so, the passage branches at a sharp right angle, like this?" The character is right there to see what they are mapping, you can help them get it right. This skill works in REAL LIFE as a couple of my former gamers have gone on to become spelunkers and use the same graph paper and pen to map the areas the explore in real life as well.
I agree. Itsba lost art/skill that people just don't want do anymore. It feels lazy in my opinion
Prep 5 to 7ish rooms, and a few corridors that connect them. Then just kinda fudge it and have the players encounter them in the order you want them to.
Works well with a sprawling maze or caverns, adjust the connecting corridors,tunnel ect to the size and shape needed, inthe end all paths lead to the final room and then the "stairs" to the next level. behind the screen that's where the magic happens :)
Yes, great point. I'd want to adjust that beforehand to avoid getting confused myself if I were to adjust it on the fly.
The only thing is that liner dungeons feel, well, linear. Whereas a non-linear dungeon is probably more interesting to the players. Which brings us back to adjusting on the fly and only creating the illusion of a non-linear dungeon. :D
So the players’ choices don’t really matter. This is not a good idea.
Here’s a better idea: stock the dungeon with monsters & treasure, write down 2-4 interesting details that PCs can inspect in most rooms, and write it all down in the dungeon key. Make a wandering encounters table that doesn’t suck. Include things in the dungeon the party can: 1) experiment with; 2) talk to; 3) steal; 4) find only if they’re clever, but it’s okay if they miss it; 5) use in a helpful way.
While running the dungeon, give hints about what’s in each room so the players can make meaningful choices, including avoiding encounters. Let their choices have consequences. Don’t create the illusion of choice - give actual choices.
@@duhg599 so long as many choices matter significantly not every single choice has to matter. Magician’s force for some elements works just fine so long as the story can still be influenced in other ways.
I'm with you on the problems of large dungeons, 1 thing I've done in the past is if the players find the stairs down I drop them into a random room on the same dungeon floor and use that as the "next level". The players don't know the difference and I don't have as much wasted prep. The other thing I've done is take that big dungeon and split it up. Different sections can be different floors or whole new dungeons they travel to get to. For the description I go into more detail on the general dungeon look, feel, smell, sounds when they enter and that sets up the mundane travel portions for them, I then do 2 or 3 sensory descriptors for each room IF they're different from the general ones I mentioned upon entering.
Noice idea with "the stairs to the same floor"!
I really like making dungeons complicated, keeps my players on their toes. But, even though I have different themed dungeons galore, I focus more on Roleplay.
I did that this past weekend, and i scared the hell out of the players.
Their not finished it yet, but for the large size, they think their almost done.....nope. it felt great to scare them when they brag on how Buff and powerful they are.
@@kevynhansyn2902 Thats what we like to call, karma. Do you have a theme for your dungeons, like water temple, heck temple, sky palace, or do you like good 'ol stone?
Yeah I feel like when you make the large dungeon yourself it's a lot easier than when you're trying to run one from a module. I'm working on a dungeon right now that's pretty long but it won't be that bad to run because I'm making it myself.
@@theDMLair ooh, i would like to know all the joocee detail.
I homebrewed my own mega dungeon and found the best way was to set up zones (normally 4) for each level
With each level having its feel and each zone adding something to it the players never got bored and the regular shift in terrain and description kept them on edge
I mean with a megadungeon, I feel like you tell the PCs what they're getting into beforehand, and it works well. It's more when they expect a "normal" adventure and come upon this giant dungeon where they tend to feel lost and upset. If they know they're doing a megadungeon, they kinda know what to expect.
taragnor even when folks are expecting a normal adventure as long as the dungeon is filled with awesome plot elements and not just boot the door and kill encounters folks will have a great time
@@taragnor Agreed. I had such a game where they were well aware that after level 5 it would become a mega-dungeon delve. I did a very Sword Art Online take and had it be 69 levels deep, each a smaller dungeon in its own right with growing and evolving themes and a consistant feeling climbing higher in the tower-like dungeon, but always being returned to the first floor between, which had become a large Hub-City for the many generations who had tried and failed to ascend. It all became far more obscure as a dungeon, but none of it ever would have worked if i had just sprung it on to a group not ready or willing for that kind of game.
I dont know how I never thought of a mini map! Great idea!
No problem dude. The trick is drawing the mini-map on a piece of paper but the players can take with them or the dungeon master can keep for them. Then in the next game session you reference that same piece of paper and just keep adding to it.
We used to make the players do the player map.
Yes, the player map often had issues. We explained it as the PCs not laying out the 10 ft pole and actually measuring as they went and thus there was significant error.
If the players didn't map, I didn't draw it for them. they had to explore their way back out.
I ran a true random generation dungeon, rolling dice for the passages and rooms. The players didn't map and I didn't either. They turned around to try going out and I said: "It seems that 40 ft behind you the passage has been blocked.
They had no way to get around it so they had to keep going until they found stairs up 3 levels, by random generation rolls.
They never failed to map again.
I remember those days...players felt less entitled, that's for sure!
Love your thoughts on this, mate. I'm glad I've run through Lost mine of the Phandelver as a player, as I'm going through it as a DM. That wave echo cave can be big and I think it will take a lot of sessions of 3-4 hours.
Good tips, thanks champ
No problem! Hope LMoP goes well for you!
This is precisely why I find homebrew easier than modules, though I like large-ish (not gargantuan) dungeons and so do those I play with.
When I ran Mad Mage, my players made it to the stairs of level 1 without encountering anything. They took all the right turns to not explore any rooms off the path to the stairs. They ignored the revenant dude in the hole.
They only went into two rooms on the second level and took the stairs to Saurgoth. I wanted to push them into a river IRL.
one extra tip i have to give is that if you want to run a large dungeon, dont just fill it with monsters, traps and treasures, try to include narrative, plot proggression, discovery and different kinds of interactions that progress or expand the story and the game world
Yes! 100% yes. A large dungeon that is only full of fights and traps and stuff gets a really lame really fast. There needs to be other stuff. Social interactions. Exploration. Stuff that makes players think stuff that expands like you said the narrative in the plot progression. You got to have that stuff in there for sure.
I don’t run modules but Homebrew dungeons and world.
Good ideas though, good video.
Yes the DM has to prepare.
"What dungeon?"
THE DUNGEON WE'VE BEEN IN THE LAST 5 GAME SESSIONS!
:-)
@@theDMLair Wait we've been in a dungeon this whole time?????
"Jarl" is pronounced with a soft J by the way... sounds like you have a real issue with pronouncing the titles of antiquated leader roles XD
Be a pronunciation problem? I'm offended. LOL the only thing that I do worse than pronounce things is spell them. :-)
Jarl is pronounced like (Y)arl.
@@Noot-Noot7305 jajaja
Some modules can have really lengthy dungeons, so this helps a lot. I realized the levels of Dungeon of the Mad Mage take too long, so my solution is to remove small encounters that aren’t important to the story. Yeah, there’ll be a lot of empty space, but I can always fill that empty space with descriptions to hint at things to come instead of having another nuisance combat.
I wonder what kind of drink the warlock would like.
maybe he prefers liquor or perhaps he's a beer man. then again maybe he likes fancy wines.
have a good day all who read this. :)
*Holds up sign that reads* IPA nice and hoppy
the DM Lair I had to look up what ipa was. lol
have a good day dude.
Man I wanna get into DnD but im not sure who to play it with
If you live around the Baltimore area, i have plenty of room.
@@kevynhansyn2902 I don't
The best way to get to D&D in my opinion is to try to see if there is a local adventurers League near where you live. You just drop in and play. It's about as good as it gets when you're just getting into it.
I've never ran a premade module (I always make stuff myself), and I make tons of notes to never look at those. It's like... an exercise to figure stuff out and then I just never look at my notes besides names and stuff. But it lends to moments where I've forgotten something without realising and then it's just a mess :D
Dude, that you just said -- yeah, that's totally me, too. lol
You, my good friend, are my DM dungeon-running twin I believe
The amount of times I thought to myself "Nah I don't need to write this down" and then once they enter a room/wing I just panic on the spot because I really did need to write that down is uncountable and I've only been DMing for a year
@@tridan111 yeeh and then you desperately think whilst trying to look as if it's all fine and you know it all already :D
Lol'd at the name btw
I’ve had to run a large dungeon before and let me tell you, it was a HUGE pain in the butt! It was 2 levels with 50+ rooms and it was non-linear!! While I was running it, I was biting my fingernails hoping my players wouldn’t find the stairs too quickly! I had to read through both levels, plan everything out, choose which monsters would be where, and flesh the whole thing out! It took me several days to do it. I think large dungeons should be left to more experienced DMs
I'm preperaing Castle Ravenloft from Curse of Strahd. 85 rooms, 10 maps for diffirent layers. As it's an actual castle, not a dungeon with 1-2 stairs to a next floor, players can visit any rooms in quite any order.
At least we are playing in roll20, so it's manageable. But it will be real challenge. It will probably be the only time, when I make a such mega-dungeon, but Castle Ravenloft is too iconic to be skipped.
I'm starting a game. It's supposed to be a survival game set in an infinitely big dungeon. Anybody know a good map maker for something that needs to be infinitely big? I know dungeon alchemist lets you add in pretty easily, but it's got so much detail it gets pretty laggy pretty quickly.
I made myself the party map drawer for the first big dungeon when we started playing online after COVID. Our DM would describe it to me as we went, and I'd draw it out at my house in notebook paper to help give the party direction. I was to cheap to buy grid paper. After we'd clear a level, he would show us the whole map on his shared screen. It was cool to see how close or far I came to the real map.
I’ve actually ran into the problem that some maps on Roll20 are so large that it will fail to reload if I swap to another tab and back
What I do with big dungeons is print out the map and laminate it. The. You can shade in the whole thing with dry erase markers and erase it bit by bit as the adventurers work through it! If they take a long rest and don’t have someone with keen mind I’ll even re-shade some areas as they forget where they were
Honestly one of the things I dislike is how small most of the dungeon maps have been in 5e. It really annoys me. I dont need them to be the size of Undermountain, but I would at least like ones that pretty big.
Phew, thought I was going crazy reading Against The Giants too. Had the exact same thoughts on how many repetetive monsters there were, plus how complex the map was. I can't imagine trying to remember all those rooms and encounters at the table.
Yeah...it took lots of prep and improv to run. Don't recommend. 😂
But Luke…
Great video, love to hear your advice on all things DM. Anyway when you mentioned highlighting parts of the adventure I literally said out loud “I do that!”
Monsters, traps treasure secret doors, development, tactics, descriptions I think are important…they all get there own color.
Additionally, I’ll breeze through an adventure once about three weeks before running it, then read it again following the map one week before so I have a pretty good IDEA of what’s going on.
Keep the videos coming!!
The biggest issue I have with larger dungeons is if there is the possibility of people in 1 area being able to respond to noise/combat in another area. (IE You are in area 25, but there is a note in area 34 that states those people could be reinforcements to area 25 if sounds of combat are heard - THESE NOTES SHOULD POINT BOTH WAYS! There should be a note in 25 stating there is assistance in 34 if needed). Then there is an issue of having the party leave without finishing and returning after a period of time ... the area (most likely) would not remain stagnant and restock in some way and if there are intelligent beings in the area, they may "beef up" security now that they realize there was a weakness in the early areas near the entrance.
Yes totally agree. This is like whatever think of as a living dungeon that responds based on the player's actions. This is why when I'm preparing a module I write on the map all of the monsters that are in each room. That way I don't have to worry about notes in the module about monsters and one room hearing any commotion in a different room. I just look at my map and make those determinations myself whether monsters should hear a battle going on nearby or not. It's much easier to do that myself then try to read through the text and go based on what the module says.
Just have one of your players with arcane eye prepared and let them have a drawn map of the entire complex.
Honestly, I feel that having a good theme of monsters is far better than random mishmash for the sake of variety. Yes repetition sucks if you do it the wrong way, but it's amazing when done in such a way that the players get to learn the tactics and become good at fighting a certain type of enemy.
But yes, huge dungeons is a chore, the idea of having to prep Castle Ravenloft is kinda putting me off from running CoS at the moment. Over 80 areas x_x
Having a theme is one thing.
Having 50 hill giants to kill is something else entirely. Lol
Yeah, I'm in the boat of "print the entire map".
I just divide it up by rooms, cut up some pages and tape them to others to keep rooms together. Then print the entire thing onto a normal piece of paper to show the sheer size difference. When they get to another room/hallway, I place down another part of the map.
Digital maps are amazing when playing online as long as you get them right.
But the most important part is preparation which is hard.
Some Dms do large dungeons well, other Dms don't
I am new dm started with Hoard of the Dragon Queen and also purchased Dungeon of the Mad Mage, level five in HOTDQ lands you in Waterdeep at the right level for DOTMM. I gave the players a choice to delve or continue. I may try my own adventures to break up 23 levels of dungeon. (Edit) They just got to Waterdeep tonight.Perfect timing on this video.
Yeah and for DOTMM, I'd consider creating some sort of plot or REASON to go into the dungeon. that's the biggest failing of that module, IMO. It gives the DM and the players no real reason to go into the dungeon.
@@theDMLair I set up a plot in HOTDQ where an npc/pc hires the characters to guard his wagon load of iron ore from Beregost to his estate near Greenest where, upon arrival, his evil step brother has sold out to the Dragon Cult and has given his (npc/pc) twin sister to Rezmir the Cult leader. I'm thinking she was taken to Skullport and then deeper into Undermountain in a plot to ambush and capture the brother. They are needed for some as yet undetermined ritual sacrifice pertaining to their mother's background. I only have two others playing so I play my npc/pc and don't have to adjust the encounters, I have him searching for info about the sister and let the players make all the decisions. It is what it is I guess.
1. Convert them to smaller dungeons. lol Make a section of 12 rooms into 2-3 large rooms. 2. EVERY room must provide the players with access to information or a key to a lock. Good treasure is always hidden in an optional area. If it doesn't serve one of those purposes, remove it. You need 2-3 combats before the BBEG to drain them of some resources to make the fight memorable. Modern times has a room or space for everything. Olden times people slept in the same room as the sheep! A village lodge where the elders hung out on a daily basis and a bunch of one-room huts for families.
Now I want to have an encounter with the bad guys in a room full of sheep that get in the way. I wonder how fast they'll be to throw down at Fireball in that situation. LOL
@@theDMLair When I ran Tomb of Annihilation, they crawled the first two levels to get a feel for the gravity of the place, but for the remaining levels they had a choice to crawl for potential loot or find the key and move on. They surmised that Acererak would likely screw them out of the loot anyway, so chose to check out all of the trickster god tombs, then find the key and move on. I stuck the key in one of the hardest rooms on each level as a major encounter and that's all they did. I got rid of the extra 5 rooms to "uncover" the key holes and used them later in another add-on dungeon to their campaign. Epic fight and out. Each level took a session of 4-5 hours. If your players like crawls, give them crawls... otherwise, hit and get it... lol
This advice completely changes the game. I wouldn't call it "Dungeons & Dragons" if players are never at risk to lose their way in the dungeon by giving them accurate maps.
If I run premade modules with big dungeons, I just simplify the dungeons to things that are relevant to the plot. Hitting dead ends or clearing rooms with no definite progression to the party's goals can be tiring. I tend to combine rooms too. For example, maybe there's a forge with an encounter, and there's a barracks with a magic weapon hidden under the bedsheets. I just put the magic item in the forge and scrap the barracks.
I may be an oddball, but I actually LIKE long dungeons. I like how they force characters to spend resources carefully and can have serious consequences.
As a compromise with my players, my world's equivalent of Undermountain works like the Tower from Danmachi - a place people can choose to go to get stronger and maybe treasure. It's stated up front that it's much larger than normal dungeons and the role of "mapper" is important. Being on a VTT I disable FOW so the players will have to rely on their notes to find their way back. Or a few escape spells, which don't work in all areas.
Throwing another method here for others to consider.
1. Get an unlabelled map for players
2. Make a copy of it with numbers for DM
3. Have your players explore by rolling dice and the DM referencing their table of where the players get to
4. (Optional) unveil parts of the map as they roll and discover them
It’s a quick way to dungeon crawlers and gives players more chances to roll dice/feel a part of the crawl instead of waiting for the DM to sort themselves out and lay everything out for them.
Example: a mine leads down into a set of caverns in the Underdark. Roll a d4 to determine where you wander to (a svirfneblin settlement, the lair of a shadow dragon, the entrance of a duergar kingdom, a massive cavern glittering to your torch light with shining ores above a still spooky lake)
Lastly: this method allows for fudging that their “roll” leads where they need to get to within the reasonable amount of time you have left in your session or campaign timeline
I avoid the overpreparing problem by forcing my players to see the entire dungeon. I make the stairs and such only accessible via keys, a signature, a password, pressing buttons, etc. It can be gimmicky and silly, but my games tend to be all fun and games anyways. Still i make them only 1 session long
I think it really comes down to how many rooms there are. Like you can have a tiny sized map that you can fit in one paper, but with a thousand rooms, oh boy thats not gonna be fun, and that "tiny" dungeon will have the same problems you stated in that video. I can make giant dungeons but with LARGE and OPEN areas. That definitely will be more viable so you can communicate the vastness and size of your location without making it an impossible spatial awareness challenge.
Some additional suggestions:
-Even if you're playing in person, use a VTT with fog of war. Yeah everyone may be looking at their laptops or tablets, but it's just so much easier than coping with old skool mapping (and if you must do that, don't worry too much about inaccuracies). You can also fog of war areas they haven't visited in a while, representing the fact that things may have changed.
-Consolidate encounters that have a bunch of monsters dispersed in penny packets. You can just have them show up as reinforcements over the course of a few rounds in a more dramatic encounter that feels dynamic and meaningful, not just a bunch of chumps that are segmented into rooms.
-Don't have everything appear on the same scale. For example, have a different set of connected rooms with a more abstract set of pathways among them. That way you don't have to have a giant map that encompasses everything. On a VTT, you have four more detailed rooms with planned, interesting encounters and can have an overview map to allow the PCs to move around.
-Cull rooms from the map. Back in the old days, you just didn't want to leave any part of the graph paper empty. That stuff was precious! But now, no, leave some of the rooms in the fog of war and just nuke them. Or make them empty and let the PCs know quickly that they're empty. (Empty rooms aren't totally useless, they might be used by the PCs or monsters later.)
-Keep track of time in an abstract way. I'm thinking of how to do this but one way would be to have searching a room take 10 minutes. Then resolve it with rolls. No need to RP every room out!
-A bit of out of character "friendly advice from the DM" can help keep the PCs from going into areas that aren't totally worked out or which will kill the PCs. You can also have walls or the like there.
-Don't sweat the small stuff. If you forget some monsters or treasure, just put it somewhere else or drop it.
When I played D&D on my Commodore 64 computer (late 80’s early 90’s) there were mazes and mines that were very easy to get lost in because graphics were poor and everything looked the same.
Because the area was so big I resorted to drawing maps that only included intersections and rooms and stairs. Excluding length of passage and shape of room altogether. Every room was a box with a line coming out for each passage out.
Very hard to explain but it made for compact map making where you could find your way back because each place where there was a choice on direction, you knew what choices you made.
Our party is currently at level 10. When they were level 5, I had them run a FULL SCALE version of "The Sunken Temple" from World of Warcraft. It was MASSIVE. It took them a 3-4 weeks of sessions to make it through, but they did OK.
Then, I had this BRILLIANT plan to use "Dawn of the Overmind", only running it backwards, and re-engineering it from the lowest levels up. It was even bigger than Sunken Temple, but it was also a way to wrap part of the plot around one of the party members specifically, and they'd have a guide as well to help them out.
Two things happened: 1. table drama, 2. never wrap an entire arc around a player. The character's player.....left the table. Long story, won't go into it, but he never came back. My ENTIRE campaign arc was wrapped around it, and as such, as they worked their way out, now without a guide (who had no point without that character there), they wandered. A lot.
Six. MONTHS of game time. For a single dungeon.
"Stop running large dungeons." Lesson learned. This group does NOT do dungeon crawls well. We don't do that any more.
I will say, I had a situation once where my players were navigating a maze. The first turn or two I simply described “you come to a T intersection, what do you do?”. My one player rolled his eyes and said “what, no map?”, so I asked if he had a cartography set. He did, so I passive aggressively tossed a pencil and blank graph paper towards him and said “cool, you’re the map”. It was really awesome watching him draw almost identically the maze I had in front of me and label certain parts/rooms/cave ins with his own nicknames. Obviously not for everyone, but don’t underestimate your players!
I've been running a campaign using nothing but the dungeons in Tales from the Yawning Portal and as you know they are all pretty much large dungeons. I've established with my players this aspect many times - that this campaign is about dungeon crawling with the story being loosely fitted around tying the dungeons together.
The fact we have been using VTT's has helped massively - roll20 initially but have recently moved to Foundry. I can imagine doing it without a VTT could be very difficult.
Currently preparing the map(s) for Dead in Thay and boy oh boy is that a LARGE dungeon.
All in all my players seem to be enjoying things so far - currently nearing the end of Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan.
Been playing RPGs since the 1st Ed DMG was printed, high school if I dare date myself that way. With that out of the way, I love MegaDungeons. Slog? No way! If done right, that is. I design in factions, or different control groups at various locations to "war" with one another and provide variety to the players. A dungeon has it's own ecology after all. I try to have a theme in mind, such as figuring out where the surface-raiding goblin band came from, or to chase down slavers headed to the Underdark with a prize and winning their way past the factions is how they reach the goals. There's always multiple entrances so that the players can escape and rest up or sell off loot. They are also modular in a sense so that if they get bored and wander off somewhere else, I can drop in the unused parts for another dungeon. VTT has made this easy. I'd love to play in a great MegaDungeon, but sadly, nobody I know wants to run one. Dungeon Hack was one of my favourite video games back in the day. Paizo has something of the kind in Pathfinder: Kingmaker, though the Tenebrous Depths gets very repetitive with monsters and just gives them new powers on new levels instead of making each unique.
Interesting.... especially since Against the Giants was an original '80's adventure, was highly acclaimed, and is still held in high regard by many OSR proponents. DotMM is much more recent, and you hope its writers will have applied the lessons of decades of gaming to be much better. And is it? (Not played I yet myself though I have it and Tales).
Why shouldn’t players know when something important is at hand? Their time is valuable and that’s the stuff they come to play for.
I don't know how well it will work, but on my first DM, to simplify the dungeon map and conceptualizations, I'm actually having it take place at a large hotel and convention center that exists in the real world. It's a large sprawling complex, but it maxes out at 6 floors, 5 of which are identical. Each floor progresses in difficulty and moves the story along, but the players will be able to go anywhere they want (plot permitting), so instead of attacking the hotel, they can single out the convention center, or the water park. It's a zombie themed urban fantasy. They are at the hotel and convention center where there is an anime/comic convention and the characters are motivated to "save con". There is quite a lot more to it than just killing zombies though, and the ground floor of everything is the most difficult area. So in order to get anywhere near the objectives, the players will have to reach higher levels (or the roof) from outside first, and work their way down. There are other puzzles and challenges they can single out on the ground floor and outside as CR1 though. But their risks and rewards will be proportional. I'm not sure how many sessions this will drag on though, it's my first time playing DnD at all, and I am DM, and it's a homebrew. Wish me luck!
I have only been playing D&D slightly less than a year, and DMing since Jan. (preparing to DM since November 19). I learned basics as a player, and then read and watched vids to learn the game fairly well. Of course, always learning more :P
Anyways, I went right to a homebrew adventure, world, etc., for our campaign. I just can't imagine doing it any other way for myself. This video really highlights some of the reasons I chose to do this. Love it.
Maybe one day I'll try a module, but as it stands, I just don't see the point if we're all having a blast.
Hopefully this helps once my players make their way to Castle Ravenloft... 88 AREAS
You're like a second person who is mentioned to Castle ravenloft and being so big. I'm thinking of running curse of strahd for one of my groups. And now I'm like panicking or something. LOL
@@theDMLair overall pretty fun, im having a great time with the spooky atmosphere. just never underestimate the scale of anything in the adventure. every NPC or location is tied to at least 3 other things haha
As I'm running CoS now. Dm guild has complete maps of raven loft. Ready to print or trace for players.
Have you tried splitting up the "Large" dungeon into sections (1/4 or 1/5 sized) and using a "door" or "archway" that is labled that tells what that section is ("Kitchen-Dinning area", "Sleeping Quarters", "Throne room and Courtyards"). This can cover not only the smaller rooms of that type but also many of the other rooms nearby and the connecting corridors. This might give your players a chance to "skip" the area if they feel it is not worth exploring. Alternatively, just "rewrite" the Map. Identify which rooms and interesting places you want or are needed, and just redraw a map that connects these spots to simplify (this can let you cut out a lot of "repetition, and large sections of endless hallways or extraneous rooms. Also you can combine rooms to get the loot/items into a smaller space rather than spread all over) Just some thoughts.
watched this cuz I'm a first-time-DM, about to run Lost Mines... uh... yeah... Wave-Echo-Cave is a thing... LMAO *insert "this is fine"-meme here*......
I home brew and use roll 20 so large maps arnt a big problem I have lot of difrent monsters /encounters and add traps so to keep it fresh... however I may have made this one a little too big
Floating island a session and a half with lizard men gient snakes, elementals and others with Medusa at the end.
A session and a 1/2 exploring a jungle (using map rooms ) including a T. rex (which my wife turned to stone using Medusa’s head) snake men living trees and rock elementals. Cool fight including an air drop of eagles to fight the high priestess. Who summoned 2 more powerful fireball elementals and had different looking (same stats) lizard men
Omg I nearly killed my wife ...(that would have been bad)
All this just to get into the temple which is a huge map with traps, different elementals fire monsters and lava. Ok 2 weeks on and they have found out the Dragonborn who sent them here is the big bad of the level and is after a powerful artefact and needed the party to get rid of the high priestess)
Now it’s at least one more week of exploring rooms (as part of the map I ignore passages just having the party start in a room )which obviously is important) I have more different encounters and switching from a large map to the rooms will (hopefully) keep it fresh but it’s been a long dungeon
I have had guest NPC’s turning up for roll play treasure chests (maybe too many cool items) lots of exploring and not counting bosses 18 different monsters (on 2 themes reptilian or elemental) bosses (so far) Medusa high priestess and a t-Rex plus the Dragonborn has just changed into the Balrog form Lord of the rings.
But it’s been a lot of work and keeping the part untreated has been a challenge.
1 thing I learned is 2 large maps is 1 too many for a level hopefully the room style next part and the new bosses and monsters will keep It interesting (been a little cage as they might read this lol)
I’ve run large dungeons ( 2ed Undermountain) many times, it’s not that hard to spend a little Time as a DM to prepare so your players enjoy the game. Being a Great DM is more than just constant winging it throwing random monsters and rooms at pc just for variety.
I am not looking forward to running Phandelver in LMOP all the other maps have been A4 size
Phandelver doesn't even fit on A3. Had to use 2 sheets to draw that boy up. Couldn't imagine the stress of drawing it while playing
In my current campaign, I have self-built everything in the world. I have about 35 years of experience to lean on, so that helps, as does having a lot of notes on a laptop to refer to. Anyway, About a year or so ago, I ran a huge scenario for the party that was a cavern/dungeon/former Dwarven city delved into a lone mountain. They were chasing an elder vampire who had several months to stock and set the place with minions and traps. Like you, I made the maps on graph paper and wrote copious notes on the maps for all 12 (?) levels of the complex. Each level was a different mini-boss in charge of a group of underground baddies (one level was a group of underground halflings who wanted nothing to do with the fight, once the party showed they were tough enough to have a shot at killing the big-bad). Each map had a stat block sheet (chart in a word document) for me to track damage done and the attacks and abilities of the NPCs. The loot was a single sheet of paper with a loot block per enemy group or notable bad guy, with the boss vampire's loot being most of the items. - It took my players eleven 5-8 hour sessions of play (we chat and sidetrack a lot, so actual play time varies) to get to and defeat the boss vampire. They had a blast, even the player whose dwarf died to the boss vampire. - - - I don't do big dungeons often, as that one took weeks to put together. Most of the time I run one or two session crawls that I don't even prep for.
Dungeons should be small unless they are the main feature of the campaign. If your DnD game offers towns, wilderness, and lots of other things players should not go for many months without engaging with those systems because they are stuck in a dungeon. However if the dungeon is the main feature, you can make it detailed and varied and interesting because you can put extra effort into things you know your players will see again. You can add secrets, puzzles, nonlinearities, complications, changes, adaptations, factions, zones, and many more. Players want to do different things and see different places, so your dungeon doesn't have to be all one theme. It should change in style and purpose as it gets deeper.
let them draw a fucked-up map? that's part of the game lmao. tons of tables do this; it's a regular part of hexcrawls, as well as od&d-style dungeon crawl campaigns. i've been doing it the whole time i've run my current game; the worst that happens is your players get turned around and have a narrative challenge of getting back on track...you can also just "default to yes" and help reorient them as needed. it also shifts that burden off of the dm and gives another way for players to engage with content. i like to have an elected "scribe" position for these sorts of things. the scribe is also responsible for session notes/recap & keeping track of damage done to the monster. proper division of labor is key when handing out positions like this to players.
So....I know I'm late to this party...but how do you typically deal with stealth/traps/etc...or the ever problematic "combat noise" pulls the entire dungeon? Having to stop at every god damn door and search for traps isn't fun to me.
Tips for mega dungeons:
I am currently DMing Dubeon of the Mad Mage. I have tested different ways for the map and ended with using a screen. Either you may use an iPad or a PC.
Use any free drawing software (FireAlpaca for me), having the map as the base layer. Then you add a grey layer as fog of war atop of it and just erase it as players go. Saving the file saves fog of war between sessions and makes everything super smooth to run. If you have any questions about how to easily run mega dungeons it is just to message me, through trial and error I have now become okay at it.
I use my Desktop CPU and many many folders to run large dungeons. Currently runnign Dungeon of the Mad Mage. I make one little folder for each noteworthy room. and fill that folder full of monster pics and location art I pull off Pintrest. I narrate the groups exploration of the dungeon skimming over unimportant drudging to get to the more interesting room or encounter the group heads towards then I pull up monster pics for the group to look at and engage with, without explanation. It was hilarious seeing my group find a Mezoloth (fiendish bug monster) and think It was a thri-kreen this completely changed there approach to dealing with that creature.
Also Dungeon of the Mad mage is full or portals I count around 30 unique magic portals. So Now I have 30 pics of magic gates I have for the players to look at. and now with a visual que each time then stumble upon a gate the players tend to remember how to activate each individual gate. and then they can remember to ask for these gates when they return to a floor of the dungeon they have already explored. It makes for getting around this massive maze much easier. when I can skim over pointless travel.
I used to struggle with running Undermountain, until a friend of mine, who runs AD&D, asked me why I draw the dungeon map. I didn't understand him and he explained that in older editions players used to draw the maps for themselves and the DM would only draw a room on the battlemap in case of a fight or sometimes difficult puzzles. That made our game way better. Players feel like they are exploring a vast system, they make notes and sketches, sometimes during the short rests they declare that they make a map and I show them the parts they had explored
What the hell has happened to players of D&D ... and DM’s too by the sound of things?
Lay out the areas with geomorphs as the players go through them and one of the players keeps track by mapping it! It is not that hard and the mapper soon gets good enough for it to not take up time.
Someone else keeps a log of treasure and a third person keeps a simple log of events and information ... unless something catastrophic has happened a group should know where it is, what they have (and where) and what is going on.
I wonder if it’s computer game auto mapping, auto quest logging and auto inventory that has caused this loss of the old gaming skills?
As you can no doubt tell, I started playing this game a looong time ago, long before PC’s and consoles came on the scene :chuckles:
I'll take homebrew quests and worlds over modules any day. I can be more innovative with the stuff I draw up and write out than modules. And I have more fun designing my own content than reading straight out of a book which is no fun to me or as I feel for the players. It just feels lazy to me when I run a module. No offense to anyone else. I am also just a very creative individual who loves creating everything from scratch and watching how everything unfolds during the game. Also when I run my own games I can remember story, maps, and encounters better without even having to take notes. But I still write things down anyways just in case. I also make up side quests on the spot and build the whole side quest before the next session. It forces ideas out of me that I wouldn't have thought up otherwise.
I know that you can change things up in a module but it's just a pain in the ass. I just use modules for source material if I need something to spark an idea. Even playing modules sometimes gets on my nerves because you'll get a DM that hits a wall in the module as your playing and can't make shit up on the spot. I am referring to something not being fleshed out in the module and a player wants to know more about that specific thing and there is nothing on it. You don't have to look up or know every little thing but don't be afraid to make shit up. Cause not everything is fleshed out in any game. Even homebrew worlds. You can make things up as you go. Just make sure you write it down afterwards. Lol
I hate big maps. They are boring. Some modules are very repetitive and boring. Modules are supposed to be for new dms in my opinion
If you have the digital versions on Dnd and beyond make a copy of the player versions of the map and put them into GIMP. Change the pixel per inch to a single tile this will resize the map for minis, then export as Jpeg or PNG onto a flash drive and take to staples or kinkos w/e and they can print it as well as laminate it for poster size. You can then cover the hallways with black construction for fog of war or cut out each room and puzzle piece it during a campain just mark the back for its room number.
I'm running Wave Eco Cave tomorrow - I've got the map in roll20, shaded for DM and I'm gonna have a second monitor with the players view up so I can reveal piece by piece as they decide where to go. I've also got the monster tokens in place so when they enter the rooms they're ready to roll
I DM'd the original Against the Giants back in the early 1980's. The players and I loved it. Maybe you were doing something wrong.
I won't run a large dungeon module, those are crazy. When running a large map, I set one or two "goals" that must be met in order to overcome an obstacle to moving on to the next level (for instance, a boss with the key for the door, a lever that uncovers a secret passage in another part of the level, etc.) and I place a set number of "real" encounters in the spaces I have prepared for them, other than that I sprinkle minor traps, minor treasure finds, or maybe a weird noncombat encounter for fun RP purposes, along with a random encounter check per extra space, with minor nuisance issues to deal with.
Honestly, I think part of the fun is having the player's map not be 100% accurate as without tools and time anything they drew would never be precise. It is simply a way for them to try and remember where they've been, so it works as long as they aren't missing whole doors and passages.
I don't understand you're want to prep the way you do and aversion to module referencing.
I personally treat the modules I run as prep and inspiration but when it comes to large dungeons you just can't prep them the same way you'd prep scenes.
I've commented on another video on why I think you struggled with calling the dungeon and a mapper mapping it, but it boils down to you have too different assumptions of what the purpose of even calling to a cartographer is for.
I like episodic megadungeons and high narrative stories, and often add large castles and sunken cities and dwarven strongholds to act as large dungeons but the shortest advice i can give that would solve your prep issue is have rooms prepared and quantum troll them. Run the dungeon until it starts to drag then cut the levels and rooms out and that session leave a cliffhanger of entering the boss room.
Kill the darlings and cut content. It works out better than having dragging 6 session slogs through a dungeon you feel like you have to memorize.
wish I'd watched this before creating a large (50 or so rooms) dungeon for my players - they did not enjoy it, they wanted to get in and out in minutes rather than spend a couple of sessions exploring the dungeon. The dungeon made sense - but it wasn't what they wanted from the game - I was rather irritated about that. lesson learned.
Just use the module, dude. That's why it's there. Ive had lots of success just reading over the dungeon once, taking some light notes, and then rereading each room during the session as the players explore. Players are always RPing and going off on tangents with each other so you should have ample time to squeeze refresh-reading in
I love my warlock tiles, no drawing, everyone knows where everything is...I build rooms and hallways and set them down as they explore the dungeon.... next I'm going to try to set them up so they can connect in different ways so I don't have to keep rebuilding them...takes more than one set to make a decent size dungeon though. I probably don't have enough tiles to do dungeon of the mad mage or anything, but I tend toward homebrew and the dungeon size is limited to how many tiles I have and I have enough to fill the table so that's enough
The thing about having the players draw the map is very hit and miss. It only works if you have someone is in to that. I am in to that not everyone is. The way I solve this is make maps on a single A4 sheet of grid paper 5ft squares. Each map is 10 ish rooms. One map is one level, each level is on a slightly different themes. This keeps it frresh and the players know where they are.
Easiest way to deal with players getting bored with a large dungeon is to simply truncate it. Have the non-important to the story line areas blocked or filled by a cave-in. That way they have the option of coming back later, clearing the cave-in to continue the exploration if they so chose. Just make it clear to the players that the cave-in would take considerable time and expertise to clear and that any further travel in that direction is not possible. That could generate a whole new adventure of assembling a work crew for the job.
This minds me when a teenager and i was running Moria for Middle earth role playing system or Merp for short,a dungeon that stretches 75 miles across and has 7 levels,my players are still hopelessly lost somewhere in Moria to this day due o the fact it used a random dungeon generator ,silly me thought i could map the whole thing ,maybe one day .....
Im running Tomb of Annihilation. And im still trying to figure out the best way to handle it once the players get to the giant multi level tomb itself. Im thinking of just getting large battle mats and drawing it out, one for each floor so we can swap them out if they go up and down floors. Or maybe using regular size mats and just drawing the whole thing in half scale and using smaller pieces to represent player placement then just draw a normal sized map for a room during battles.
The main problem is that traps are everywhere in this tomb and player positioning is extremely important so I want them to be able to show where they are all standing at all times.
As a dm of a few years now, one of my biggest issues I still have is that I forget that dnd is always going to be slower paced than a video game. I designed a dungeon that I thought would be pretty short, but in a 4 hour session they're not even halfway through.
I had this idea while watching your video is maybe try to separate out dungeon into somewhat more distinguishable areas. Maybe this will be more easy for outside areas like making buildings with multiple rooms and when the players are done with one building they can go to the next. In a dungeon maybe there could be one or two easily distinguishable entry ways into another part of the dungeon that has multiple rooms and so on. I also have difficulty with this and plan on maybe trying to make a way to use roll20 map at the table.