How do you come up with floor plans?

[Popertop]

I'm gonna roll up a one-on-one session with my friend
who will play a rogue. Mainly going to be an espionage campaign,
probably low to no magic [for him at least].

What are some ways you come up with floor plans
for a building that will feature lots of sneaking
and maybe a little combat?

[tuesdayscoming]

Corners, curtains, and shadows (that is, sources of light with a limited range). Do you have any idea as to what the 'theme' of the session is going to be? Where's he going to be breaking into? Whats the goal of the breaking and entering?

[AslanCross]

Graphing paper. For houses I usually make them as detailed as possible, including individual pieces of furniture.

[Popertop]

for this first part he has been contracted to steal the crown jewels from one of the stronger kings in the nation[not based off any particular setting, just kind of a new thing I'm making]

He'll be debriefed with a basic blueprint of the building, common patrol routes, and info on the systems [read: magic traps] he'll have to get by to even enter the room with the treasure in it. He'll have a partner feeding him info from a secure location, as well as leading him to equipment drops throughout the mission.

I'm hoping to make it primarily skill based [rogue] with some combat sprinkled in, but pretty heavy on the stealth and acrobatics and cat-thievery shenanigans.

This is going to be the first in a series [hopefully] of missions centering around this king and his court. I don't know how big I wanna make it, but since this is just a one-on-one, it's probably a good idea to keep things smaller...

Do you know of any good deals for graph paper and other tools I would need to do this? I was thinking Office Max would be a good bet.
I heard that some people use a vinyl mat and use marker and just wipe that down after they are done with the encounter.

[Scorpions__]

I always wanted to use Appendix H from Dragon Compendium to generate a dungeon, it was originally written by Gygax (you can tell by the number of charts) and lets you generate a dungeon by rolling on a series of charts that generate doors, corridors, monsters, traps, etc...

Just a thought for you. It is quite expansive, and looks like fun if you had some graph paper and a pencil.





DM[F]R

[Ormur]

I mostly think of the purpose of the building and any sort of external limitations. One dungeon was a crypt so I drew a sort of maze with a lot of corridors lined with corpses and bones. Temples can be more abstract, maybe based on some motif of the deity. The thieves guild in my campaign was heavily trapped, only accessible from the second storey and had offices, meeting rooms and a vault. Over the street was a big shady tavern operated by them. It was also quite small and on three or four floors because it was in a densely populated city neighbourhood.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

When I design adventure locations (and their floorplans), I always start with their purpose - in-game, and meta-game.

Example:
In-game, this is the King's Castle. The Coronation Crown and Sceptre are kept here, only worn for ceremonial occasions. The King's Castle is in the capital of the Kingdom. The Crown Jewels are worth huge amounts of money and symbolic, so they must be very well protected - even given that they are inside the King's Castle.

Meta-game, this is a cool sneaky mission where the rogue character gets to steal awesome treasure from an impossible fortress. This has to be scary, but do-able.

Balancing these two needs is the key - you've got to have believable defences, and clear ways to get round them for the PC. Draw nice alcoves and statues for the thief to hide behind. Have tapestries and banners. Lots of corridors windows for the PC to escape out of. Have a wall plan, as well as a floor plan - he's going to go climbing outside, of course.

A vinyl mat and markers are a great way to do your own maps. Alternately, you can get rolls of square paper for floor plans, which are great for drawing out complex rooms beforehand.
The more mapping you can have done before you play, the better the game will run. Or if you can multitask relatively well, draw the floor plan out while you describe the scene - but make sure that you are describing something other than the exact bit of the map that you're drawing for your player.
If you've got any existing floor tiles from Paizo or WotC or whoever, use them as short cuts if they're appropriate.

[Moginheden]

I use http://donjon.bin.sh/d20/dungeon/index.cgi and http://www.myth-weavers.com/generate_dungeon.php? to make the base maps then modify them with paint to change details to fit what I want and a text editor to change the room descriptions, traps, and enemies to fit what I'm looking for.

Personally I find the generators work as a good base, but you need to customize them to fit the story of your adventure.

[Emmerask]

I'm gonna roll up a one-on-one session with my friend
who will play a rogue. Mainly going to be an espionage campaign,
probably low to no magic [for him at least].

What are some ways you come up with floor plans
for a building that will feature lots of sneaking
and maybe a little combat?

I mostly google for real (house/mansion/castle etc) floor plans and maybe change some minor details with a painting program, it takes some time to get something that is fitting but it has some very distinct advantages:

a) you get something realistic (because it is ^^)
b) even if searching takes some time, it doesn´t even come close to the time sink painting from scratch would be... having only so much time for preparation I can then spend said time working on the story etc