RPGs: Defining Dungeons

“Dungeon” is a pretty evocative term. The mere mention brings to mind buried, ancient ruins of civilizations long past, or maze-like tunnel networks that have been claimed by a dragon and its army of worshiper-supplicants, or a tomb filled with restless undead and traps to prevent access by looters and graverobbers. These all make for excellent adventure spaces in D&D, but it’s unnecessarily restrictive to think these are the only things dungeons can be.

It’s not a stretch to imagine the entirety of a cursed swamp can function as a mega-dungeon that requires days to progress to each small dungeon within its bounds, but even something like a siege or a pitched battle might be best designed to function as a dungeon for your players.

Today, we’re taking a look at how I’ve come define “dungeons” in D&D, and how I use that in my own adventure design.

What is a Dungeon?

At its most generalized, inclusive definition, I look at a dungeon as any gauntlet of two or more encounters in which the party’s ability to rest is restricted. This can be from danger, from time pressure – any reason the party might be unable to lay down and rest and feel completely safe. To return to the “cursed swamp mega-dungeon” example, both of my last campaigns began with “Eth-terel, the Cursed Bog,” a large swamp cursed by ancient magic, forcing any creatures who died within to rise into undeath each night and filled them with a ravenous frenzy.

For the first several levels, the party’s expeditions into the swamp were short-term, never more than a day or two, and they quickly discovered areas where they might be able to rest, but not for free, such as Kortho’s ogre camp. Each night they wished to stay at Kortho’s camp, they had to aid the ogres in defending their walls. For two hours, they were set as additional defenders, and they battled a number of hard-to-deadly encounters with only a handful of minutes between. To earn a rest within the mega-dungeon, they had to survive a gauntlet, something that design-wise was basically a single-room dungeon (a single arena, the walls of the camp and the clear-cut woods immediately beyond).

As the party became more capable and created their own safe areas by removing dangers from the swamp, they were able to progress deeper and deeper and finally reach the center and break the curse upon the land. Other dungeons here included a sunken fort, a compound belonging to an order of religious zealots that intended to break the curse themselves (with an ancient magic that would eradicate a tribe of peaceful lizardfolk as collateral damage), the Wovenwood (a thicket of woods conquered by giant spiders), and nearing the end, a portal into hell, a dragon’s lair, and finally the buried vault of an ancient lord.

More recently, the party arrived at a pirate town, Freeport. The town had become a political powder keg, with the pirate cult of the Leviathan, the Fathomcallers, wanting to drown the world (the party’s at that level these days). They discovered through their prisoner, a Fathomcaller captain, that the gang intended to attack Freeport and neuter its ability to stand against them. Upon arrival, the party marched their prisoner through the streets to the queen’s set, and discovered that their actions caused the Fathomcallers to strike several days before their planned attack.

Beginning at the throne room, the party needed to fight their way down to the docks to recapture the city’s port defenses and return to their ship. They were ambushed in the throne room, they battled foes at one of the city’s major centers, Westwind Square, they had heroic vignette moments to affect the battle at large by spending hit die, they needed to run through a street being raked by cannon fire to avoid another lengthy encounter, and finally took the battle to the Fathomcaller vice admiral upon his ship in the bay.

This quickly became the easiest way I could organize my thoughts when it came to a battle like this in D&D. I knew the party wouldn’t have the chance to rest, so I built in a system to allow them to spend hit die to aid the people of the city, but then use whatever they had leftover at the end of that segment for healing. They had no opportunity to rest at all, and had to budget their resources accordingly. Building it out as a dungeon just made the most sense.

So let’s get into how I organize my dungeon design.

Outlining a Dungeon

As a writer, I like outlines. I usually leave mine pretty open-ended to allow the story room to develop as I go, but I like to nail down the overall vision from the outset. I’ve built my dungeons using an outline structure for nearly half as long as I’ve been a DM, and it hasn’t steered me wrong yet.

In my notes, I had “the Battle of Freeport” as the title, wrote a scenario summary, then went down point-by-point through the encounter spaces. I included a description of the room (its appearance, its function, etc.), what kind of encounter was present (I mostly list these as Combat, Social, Obstacle, or Hazard), and then I have another bullet point describing the details of the encounter (such as enemy types and numbers or the effects of the obstacle / hazard).

And there you have it! A narrow definition of what a dungeon can be is a disservice to the breadth of what you’re capable of doing in D&D, and hopefully you can create even more unique and diverse adventure spaces with that in mind. As always, thank you for reading! Good luck out there, heroes.