Dungeon Entrances & Exits
#Dungeon23 Month 2 | The Manse
Hello! The past few issues have had a lot of new stuff. I made my first post about #Dungeon23 and introduced my megadungeon MYR REGATH. Then I announced that I’m starting a ttrpg co-op with my best friend Krist, calling it THE STEEL GUILD and that we’re working on a supplement for PIRATE BORG. Check this article if that intrigues you…
This week I want to share what I’ve been working on throughout February for #Dungeon23! February was a rough month for me in my personal life, but I found a great amount of solace making art to distract me. And distract oh I did - I did a bunch of drafting for my ttrpg WIP Project Unseen, and completed the second level of Myr Regath: called The Manse of the Drowned Duchess.
The idea behind The Manse started as a wealthy nobleman’s villa sliding into the sea, plagued by aquatic creatures. As Myr Regath took shape in my mind as a once-proud city that was cast through space-time down into the crust of the world, the Manse shifted from sliding into a terrestrial lake to sliding into an underground lake. I knew I wanted it to be big - bigger in space than anything I’d done previously - so when I sat down to do the floor plan I spread this big mansion out over 4 pages of grid paper.
Even bigger than I had initially anticipated, my heart feels full to see this fully put together. My map-drawing skills have already improved after the first two months of this challenge, and one of those were breaking out my colored pencils!
I crammed this subterranean manse full of undead butlers and creeping vines, pools of fetid water and rotting courtyards. It also ended up serving as an homage to Castle Amber (my favorite classic D&D module) with some choice funhouse elements, like a devil sitting at a table waiting to gamble for the souls of visitors and dinner parties of ghosts eternally reenacting their last meal.
The Manse is a place at war: the undead corpses of the villa's servants struggle to keep the place clean. They fight off increasing waves of antediluvian fish men upset over the intrusion into their underground watershed. Travelers to the manse looking for a means to travel even further down into Myr Regath (D37!) will have to contend with the hostilities as well as the enemies themselves.
Week 1
The highlights of this week: starting to notate which rooms lead where in the right-hand column: I didn’t do an amazing job but feel like this will be something to improve upon in the future!
D7 contains a Dueling Room with (semi-sentient) undead still simulating sword fights, who are incredibly offended to be interrupted and challenge PCs to a duel! The duel is a moderate challenge, and I imagine PCs should be rewarded for playing along.
D8 is the Trophy Room: every wealthy magnate needs a dedicated room to show off all their cool stuff, and the Daub Duchess & her family have this one! The walls hold stuffed heads of crazy monstrosities like squids, manticores and sphinxes. There’s also a glass tube in the corner with a pre-pubescent Tiefling boy inside. He bears a remarkable likeness to the Duchess’ grandson in all the paintings nearby, but really is a Slaughter Demon in disguise!
Having a disguised enemy is one way to spice up a room full of loot and treasure, PCs might either feel compelled to release him or be unsettled by the boy clearly locked away with great care and attention.
Also to my great shame I wrote down rooms for D9 and D10 and forgot to go back later and literally draw what was in the rooms. Pro tip: if you leave something for later, leave a damn note!
Week 2
The highlights of this week: the Family Necropolis over in the upper left (upper right as I drew it!). I left it unfilled until I did all the manse grounds in one foul swoop, but I really liked the idea of this parcel of land being spliced far, far underground and their ancestor’s bodies coming with them!
In my original notes I made a connector between this level and the first level (The Tomb) so I put that entrance in the crypt! It doesn’t make much sense to have a secret elevator within the manse itself, so a secret door behind a crypt mausoleum seems evocative. Multiple expeditions in and out of Myr Regath might involve leaving the mansion, going in and out of the necropolis for provisions, only to return…as the dungeon goes from being an outline to a fleshed-out place, I’m really liking the shape of cycles of expeditions for adventure and loot!
D14 is the chamber of the Head Butler, who has now become a ghoul behemoth. A Ghoul-hemoth, if you will! His room also contains another Space Time anomaly, containing memories and emotions from some of the dead servants.
D21 feign a meal when people arrive upon the scene, and the food magically seems to not only be real, but nice! Sitting with the dead and sharing their meal grants some boons, but a course or two are cursed. Cursed courses!
Week 3
The highlights for this week: expanding the personal rooms of the Lady of the House and adding the final Goal of this dungeon level!
This whole level has one big entrance (the natural cavern from High Street) but it has no obvious exit to levels further down. The exit or goal is located within the confines of the mansion. If the exit was outside there would only be a few obstacles between the entrance and exit. Adventure requires quite a few obstacles between start and finish, so the goal is within the mansion and behind a locked door.
This necessitates some exploration of the cursed manor, but the lock is mundane so knowledgeable PCs might be able to run through it pretty fast!
The Lady of the House - the eponymous Drowned Duchess - was an avid botanist before she met her aquatic end. It’s why the mansion has three separate courtyards with different magic trees, and her personal greenhouse is here in D33.
Some viney experiment has been let out of containment in the long years since Myr Regath’s downfall, and the door’s hermetic seal now functions as a trap. If finagled out of frame by curious PCs, the rush of air is going to push the door out as grasping vines worm their way out. Loving the image of PCs struggling to keep the door closed and get it back into position, magic vines trying to strangle them as it happens…
My design process for dungeons involves a lot of scenarios. I don’t know if that’s just my personal GM-ing style, or from my background as a fiction writer, but I value trying to set up scenarios at the table rather than simply what loot is in a room.
Of course, a sparse room full of loot can be just as appetizing to the weary ratcatcher…
Week 4
Dawn of the final week! The highlights here are fleshing out of the servant’s wing. I love fleshing out dungeons like they’re real places that need to be lived-in, and sometimes I had to remember to put in threats like angry fish men or cave prawns (prawns the size of chihuahuas) with all the talk of wooden cabinets, lye and overflowing sinks.
As I neared completion of this level I also finally fleshed out The Celestial Lounge. All the staircases lead up to the family’s grand ballroom, replete with dusty cabinets of whiskey and windows of the lake outside. D30 seems big and empty at first glance but the place is full of ethereal ghosts! Echoes of The Duchess’ last great gala linger here, but they continue to argue in their unlife and can only be put to rest by negotiating with them in a Skill Challenge!
Skill Challenges are a great way to get everyone involved in a task, having every player contribute some skills to complete a goal. In this case, get a bunch of arguing ghosts to cease their jabbering and be put to their final rest. Completing this prevents the zombie servants from restocking as players come in and out on expeditions, as well as releasing a Sapphire Key (a key to a great vault full of treasure later on in Myr Regath).
The Dahlia Duchess
Notably, this is a level without a clear boss. It’s a big haunted mansion and the exit to further adventure lies hidden behind a locked door, exploration is necessary to find that out. All that’s needed to progress is to find the giant hole, scale down, and keep on exploring Myr Regath.
But - even if it’s optional, there’s definitely a boss in this level. The Dahlia Duchess and her Ducal-Consort were not great parents, and the fallout of their failed marriage resulted in her becoming a sunken, undead monstrosity. She’s secretly the one sending the fish men up to raid and destroy the manor, and they will get further and further in as players do expeditions in and out of Myr Regath.
Defeating her is optional, and even knowing that she is still down there is pretty arcane lore. She’s got to have some good loot down there, but defeating her also removes the fish men from restocking in the dungeon. This prevents a lot of the animism of this level, even as it’s a pretty dangerous place regardless.
High Street was a level where players could easily skip past a lot of the content if they weren’t interested. The Manse is much less so, even as it’s not too straightforward. Curious players can root around in overgrown bushes and tombs looking for a way out, but they can choose which parts of the sandbox to delve further into.
And of course, they can always come back and explore even after they’ve found the gaping chasm down into The Old King’s Menagerie (which will probably be April’s dungeon level? March is a Cathedral dedicated to Asmodeus)
What to Draw
This month I thought a lot more about entrances and exits. The placement of where a group of PCs enter and exit a space is fundamental to how a space is used, whether it’s a place to be explored or avoided, and how the game material within is experienced. Something basic, but like the mastery of all art, you have to figure out the boundaries of the rules so you can break them in purposeful ways.
The level of a dungeon has an entrance. It’s got rooms (or generally just areas) full of obstacles like monsters, traps, NPCs and everything in between. Then it’s got a goal, which in the context of a megadungeon is an exit to further levels and content. Usually there are keys lost within the obstacles to actually progress to the goal, whether they’re literal keys to unlock forbidden doors, or secrets to access a fight with a particularly nasty monster.
Last month’s High Street was “badly” designed. It’s one long hallway (a sunken city street) with all the rooms (obstacles) behind locked doors and out of the way. Y’know, because that’s how streets are laid out in real life: streets are the opposite of obstacles, they are river courses for the movement of people en mass. So it’s very possible for players to skip a vast majority of the obstacles and get to the two goals at the end: a traditional boss fight on one path, and the entrance to The Manse on the other path.
This is only “bad” because you want this game material to be used, rather than unused or avoided. Avoiding a fight or source of conflict is a kind of victory, but there’s a dark desire to make all of the stuff that you worked hard on to be seen and experienced, but that’s not always a drive that should be fulfilled.
I did that on purpose to encourage the fantasy / vibe that Myr Regath is an actual city street submerged and transposed down into darkened caves. For February’s level I decided to follow a much more “traditional” progression or flow chart of how PCs are likely to experience this sinking villa.
The entrance is the giant natural cavern. This cave has extensive grounds around it, but no clear goal. Thus, the manor at its center is the last option, the last place to check next…and adventure ensues! The goal is a large vertical shaft leading downwards, but it’s in the mansion behind a locked door, and plenty of obstacles.
My newer understanding of the layout of spaces can be attributed to Sersa Victory’s Cyclic Dungeon Generation. This is an incredible resource that lays out these ideas in the form of visual flow charts, uses them to make an Old School Essentials compatible dungeon, and is one of the coolest game design resources I’ve read in a long time. We all stand on the shoulders of giants, and I highly encourage you give it a read yourself.
There’s absolutely a balance between simulating these fictional spaces like they’re real spaces, and places where game play (sic. adventure!) happens. To make a good dungeon, you’ve got to ply both drives. The spaces need to feel like places built by real people to support that they’re real, but they also need to facilitate awesome game play at the table.
Conclusion
Thank you for reading me wax poetically about my fictional megadungeon! Working day by day on this long project has been really rewarding so far, and I hope staring at my terrible handwriting inspires you to steal bits and pieces for your own creations. I’m more directly applying the Cyclic Dungeon Generation to next month’s level, so subscribe to Hearthside to get even more game design examples!
Coming soon are more Tales from The Dripping Tap, both about why GMs should collude with their players to set up cool moments at the table, as well as sharing more of the factions in Talzur to further round out my original faction article.
As always, keep writing!