tahu88810
2010-12-08, 01:49 PM
So as a DM, I've found that I've always had trouble preventing my dungeon crawls from being linear and open-ended. This is a problem, as I dislike any kind of adventure, even low-level ones, where there aren't multiple paths (metaphorically or otherwise) for the characters to take. While the dungeons are never wholly straight paths, they never seem to involve multiple pathways and the like. This also leads to a problem that the players might not always notice, but that I do: A lack of verisimilitude. The dungeons are less realistic. Because of this, I tend to avoid dungeon crawls altogether.
I remember reading a thread here once, as I am wont to do, where people were discussing the Temple of Elemental Evil and how it was nearly perfect as a quintessential dungeon crawl: It provided a large amount of choices and a variety of scenarios for the players, and it was also brought to life by things such as rival factions. This, of course, ties in to the above paragraph. In order to obtain those two amazing things, one needs larger dungeons with more room to have such things. The DMs of the playground no doubt have a good amount of collective experience in creating dungeon crawls, and I was wondering if maybe you could all enlighten me with some tips and tricks, or perhaps even a small walk through as you make a dungeon or two?
tl;dr
I suck at creating dungeon-crawls. I'm looking for advice. How do you go about it?
I remember reading a thread here once, as I am wont to do, where people were discussing the Temple of Elemental Evil and how it was nearly perfect as a quintessential dungeon crawl: It provided a large amount of choices and a variety of scenarios for the players, and it was also brought to life by things such as rival factions. This, of course, ties in to the above paragraph. In order to obtain those two amazing things, one needs larger dungeons with more room to have such things. The DMs of the playground no doubt have a good amount of collective experience in creating dungeon crawls, and I was wondering if maybe you could all enlighten me with some tips and tricks, or perhaps even a small walk through as you make a dungeon or two?
tl;dr
I suck at creating dungeon-crawls. I'm looking for advice. How do you go about it?