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Yora
2020-05-26, 09:16 AM
I've recently started a new sandbox campaign and the players are reaching the end of the opening adventure that I made to introduce them to the world and present them with adventure hooks to start exploring the wilderness on their own. I got a long list of ideas for various sites that can be found in the wilderness, but I am realizing now that I really don't know very much about creating dungeons that are not enemy lairs. I am feeling confident enough with making small strongholds above ground and below and filling them with interesting creatures and NPCs to deal with, but when it comes to creating ruins where the place itself is challenging I don't really know what to do with them.

There are all kinds of puzzles that you can grab from countless places, but I always feel that most of these just don't fit for the style of campaigns I am running. I never can really believe in puzzles that are supposed to prevent access to something valuable, but can be cracked in 10 to 15 minutes by a bunch of regular people with a little bit of cleverness shared between them. I also can't believe in cocaine wizards who build funhouse dungeons for entertainment. And I feel when I can't believe in these things being plausible, I can't sell them to players as something serious either.

So how do you make ancient ruins in the wilderness that are interesting to explore, with hostile creatures being only one kind of obstacle among many? What are the tools and methods for creating content like this?

One thing closely related to puzzles are of course traps. But I feel like the 1d6 spear trap is very boring for several reasons. The first one is that in most dungeon crawling games, these don't really accomplish their supposed purpose of stopping intruders. Particularly in D&D 5th edition, which I am running right now, losing a few hit points is not an issue and you just continue on like nothing happened. You could of course make the damage higher, but even then you still have the issue that this type of traps doesn't offer any real interactivity. The moment a player first gets to react to a trap, that trap already has expired and does not allow for any more meaningful interaction. And you don't want to have traps of this kind that can just kill a PC. You just walk along your merry way and the GM suddenly says "Make a saving throw. If you succeed nothing happens, if you fail you are dead." That isn't fun gameplay.

But traps can be a lot more than that. Even the plain 1d6 spear trap (perhaps upgraded to 5d6 spear trap) becomes a much more interesting element when the players know about its presence before it is triggered. Now they have an obstacle that gets in their way and poses a threat, and requires them to make decisions how they want to interact with it. Even better when "I make a disarm roll" is not an option. This kind of trap even works when it only looks like there could be a trap, even when there isn't. The invisible pressure plate at a random tile in a completely generic hallway is terrible. You first need something to make the players consider that there could be one. You could say that a non-threatening 1d6 spear trap could serve as such a warning, but if it's in a random spot in a generic hallway, it only tells the players "traps can be everywhere with no warning" and leads to the only logical conclusion "you need to check everything before you touch it or step on it". Which also doesn't make for good play.

I think the best traps are those that either trigger an alarm and call guards to respond, or to confine the PCs until guards find them. The players have triggered something, but they still have time to react, make plans, and take actions before the consequence hits them.

Some years ago I saw a video about level design in vidogames and it had great praise for Half-Life 2 for having something to do in every single room. Some had enemies, some had big puzzles, others mini-puzzles. And some only required you to move a barrel or break a crate to get through the next door. It only takes a second and is trivial, but the players feel that they are doing something instead of just walking through long empty hallways. Moving barrels and braking crates over and over won't be working in an RPG, but I really like the idea that every room should have some kind of interactivity. And too often I find that lots of the rooms I make for my dungeons really don't. Any idea how to spice these up?

Nifft
2020-05-26, 10:35 AM
The most plausible "puzzle" traps which I've used have been mild speedbumps, intended to delay entry in order for the guards to have a better chance at engaging the interlopers.

They're not "puzzles" like a riddle game, but they might be some sort of laborious-to-move combination lock. If there is a riddle, it's more like a password hint, and the solution would take time to input even if you guessed the answer immediately.

The party can defeat the guards and then tackle the speedbump, or they can divert resources (actions) to solving the "puzzle" during combat, which might give them an edge on the NEXT combat -- or might allow them to run away from the front-door guards with full XP for overcoming that challenge.

Biffoniacus_Furiou
2020-05-26, 11:54 AM
Obstacles like you find in Skyrim with swinging/spinning blades could be an option. The spinning blades force a Dex save vs being knocked prone, which then prevents you from escaping before taking damage again and forcing another save vs being knocked prone. Swinging blades on a catwalk would knock the character off and down into further danger such as lava or acid or deep murky water with grapple-happy monsters or similar. Deep water with an oil slick floating on top would be not only gross, but anything in the water would be completely obscured from anyone out of the water without hindering the aquatic opponents' attacks on anyone who's fallen in.

Hazards like the ones I suggested in this high-level red dragon lair (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?322346-Volcanic-mountain-cavern-style-dungeon-as-red-dragon-lair#2) (3.5 edition) could be a good starting point for that type of environment, depending on how deadly you want it to be. Dangerous environments like thick smoke or choking gasses, or having to take a path that requires them to swim through hazardous liquids (lava, or acidic water, or blindingly murky water with monsters along the way), etc. can be a challenge at any level. Maybe an area that requires walking through thigh- to waist-deep murky water that has pits and dropoffs that are impossible to see, with hostile creatures lurking and ready to grab anyone who falls in.

Pit traps should always come with barbed spikes that trap (restrain) anyone who's impaled and deal significant damage if forcefully removed, combined with rat or spider swarms or similar, or just put a gelatinous cube at the bottom that automatically engulfs anyone who falls in. Include an actual encounter such as shadows or specters or similar lurking in an adjacent room, which move through the wall and attack if they hear the trap triggered. Put a gem that emits a semi-permanent Darkness spell effect inside the pit trap near the top, it's obstructed until the trap is triggered but once triggered the room is plunged into darkness making it difficult to rescue anyone who fell in.

Puzzles that require a specific class feature that not just anyone would even have any hope of solving can still be somewhat simple. So a logic puzzle like the four statues in Witcher 3 (https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Magic_Lamp_(quest)) (one has an instrument, one has a dog, one has both, and one has neither) but each has one or more magic auras of a particular school and they need to cast Detect Magic to see which one has which to solve it. Include an encounter with an anti-spellcaster opponent such as a golem that appears to be one of the statues for the puzzle but it becomes active and attacks when they cast Detect Magic on it. If you use a clay golem (its surface had dried and it was indistinguishable from the other statues) it may move off of a vent or pressure plate that causes an acidic vapor to pour into and fill the room and maybe make that automatically close the door or drop a barricade into the doorway as well. If the puzzle room is quite small there may be characters trapped outside who need to break in before they can help.

Democratus
2020-05-26, 02:59 PM
I'm a fan of some kinds of puzzles. Things like a chess board floor that teleports you back outside the dungeon if you don't move on the board like the chess piece. That's exactly the kind of thing a wizard might create to impress visitors/rivals/paramours. But the wizard died long ago and the dungeon was abandoned, it's original purpose lost to time.

For dungeons found in a free-form hex crawl, I am a big fan of the "5 room dungeon". It's short, thematic, and tries to offer a variety of encounters along the way. It can usually be done in a single gaming session - which is a nice bonus.

My hex-crawl worlds tend to have a small number of mega-dungeons and tons of lairs, basements, abandoned castles, etc. which are perfect for the 5-room dungeon design philosophy.

My 2cp.

Zarrgon
2020-05-26, 03:09 PM
Lots of Answers:

1.Why is it here? A great answer to this one is the simple: it's something that is broken. It was not made by someone to be a puzzle/trap/encounter, but it is one now. Once upon a time it was a room with a pool in it...but that pool over flooded 200 years ago. So now it's a half water full room. And the water is full of dangerous fish or plant life. And the character must find a way across this room somehow. A great one is a room that is dangerious, but once had a wooden bridge across it...hundreds of years ago. Magic is even better for this as malfunction magic can do anything you want it to do.

Pass Points A good way to keep a place secure is to put in pass points: spot where you can pass with no effort, but others will be blocked. Passwords are easy and obvious, but not the only way. Another great way is something like climbing or swimming, if the person/group/race that once used the dungeon could do so at will and with ease. Magic also adds such things as seeing in the dark, flight and other movements.

Pass Traps Same Idea as above. There is a trap, a net or spikes or whatever. But the person/group/race that once used the dungeon has a simple pass. Step only on the white floor tiles, touch the two black dragon head statues, whistle a tune, or whatever. It works great for magic wards that are not triggered by someone wearing an object, say a white rose. And all members of the group wore one.

Puzzle traps as Encounters try to think of puzzle traps as more encounters made to challenge the players. They simply are not combat encounters.

Beyond Hit Point Harm There are a ton of ways to harm a character other then hit point damage. D&D has nerfed or eliminated most of them over the years....but you can bring them back. Poison, curses, wounds and spell effects can all harm a character. Just make sure you don't use ones with easy fix or cures. The best ones maybe non standard 'homebrew' ones.

Every Room is an Encounter While some rooms should be empty realistically, just don't do it as it does not work in a game setting. Every room should have something that is at least a slight test of a skill or ability. The room has a wall of deep small holes, some with potion bottles in them. So how do you get a small bottle out of a small hole that is five feet deep? Each room has hidden things or something that can be moved or touched and often has a use.

Randomness Really makes a dungeon or any adventure fun. You can find a ton of random tables online...roll on a couple. It's fun to find something you would "never think to put" in a dungeon.

Yora
2020-05-26, 03:36 PM
If the campaign does not reward characters for getting into fight, having obstacles that can be overcome easily in a way that would make a lot of noise could be quite interesting. You could simply destroy it and announce your presence to half the dungeon, or have to find an alternative solution that is more quiet.

Or a simple solution that will allow access to door A, but will also make access to doors B and C even more difficult.

Tanarii
2020-05-27, 12:27 AM
Pick up or download a copy of Basic Set Mentzer and B1 In Search of the unknown, and run that. Then be prepared to house rule the heck out of 5e to make it compatible with serious tricks and traps dungeon exploring. For starters you'll need to ditch the full heal up on long rest.

If you end up really interested, download and read 05R's Into the Unknown for 5e. It makes a lot of mods in an attempt to get 5e into something that'll work.

If that sounds like too much work or uninteresting, and you really want to run a 5e sandbox, you're better off setting it up West Marches style and accepting that it'll be somewhat heavy combat focused in the dungeons and wilderness adventuring sites. You can still steal from other sources, in fact you pretty much have to, to drop in mini-dungeons all over the map, but they won't have that serious tricks and traps and terror and wonder feel of an old school dungeon. But you will get an exploration feel from the hex crawl sandbox, so it's worth it.

jjordan
2020-05-27, 03:51 PM
I've recently started a new sandbox campaign and the players are reaching the end of the opening adventure that I made to introduce them to the world and present them with adventure hooks to start exploring the wilderness on their own. I got a long list of ideas for various sites that can be found in the wilderness, but I am realizing now that I really don't know very much about creating dungeons that are not enemy lairs. I am feeling confident enough with making small strongholds above ground and below and filling them with interesting creatures and NPCs to deal with, but when it comes to creating ruins where the place itself is challenging I don't really know what to do with them.
So don't build lairs unless lairs are appropriate.

I've got a dungeon that was the private retreat of a powerful wizard and his students and guests. It's built in another plane (a shadow version of the astral plane) and has entrances that open into the material plane. There are defenses at the entrances that are mostly broken and mostly aimed at defeating devils/demons and wizards. Physical security was mostly handled by the students and the servants. The students are long gone, the servants are still around but are woefully underequipped after two hundred years without resupply. There are portals throughout the palace complex which were intended to stop the passage of shadow creatures. Some of these work, some don't, and others have been damaged/corrupted and now have different effects on different targets. Are these traps? No, but they function as such for the characters.

Similarly, in an underdark area there are hazards that function like traps (unstable areas can collapse, creatures that hunt by ambush, difficult terrain) even though they aren't. There are also deliberate traps (set to guard borders and/or kill enemies).

Puzzles are something that some players like and others don't. I've never been a fan of the 'figure out which gems to put into which place to stop the poison gas from killing us' type of puzzles. I'm a fan of puzzles that the players (aided by the skills of their characters) can figure out (or not). Why was the wizard's palace abandoned? The clues are all there and figuring it out will give the players some useful information, but they don't have to figure it out, they can just loot and run and continue the game. That kind of puzzle I like.

Pauly
2020-05-27, 04:14 PM
Think about in these terms
What would the builder of the place have done?

- High traffic areas will not be trapped or puzzled because that will just annoy the inhabitants in their daily routine.

- There will not be a “snake” layout where the boss has to traverse the whole length of the dungeon unlocking and relocking puzzles and traps every time she wants to go out. If you want to create something like this have rockfalls or similar block the regular access ways in a ruin. But if there are intelligent inhabitants they will have cleared out those inconveniences themselves a long time ago.

- traps have two purposes to kill or to capture. DMs overuse kill traps and underuse capture traps. Kill traps are generally used away from areas the builders live/work. There are two main types of kill traps (1) a deterrent designed to keep enemies away from a zone, or (2) have to be manually operated so that an intelligent being sees the bad guys in the wrong place and pulls a lever. The first type is often highly visible or has clear warning signs to prevent good guys or visitors randomly triggering them, the second type tends to be well hidden. Capture traps will either have an alarm or be in an area that is regularly checked.

- alarms are underused by DMs and much more prevalent irl dungeon equivalents.

- think of puzzles like a bank vault. If you have the key/combination they are trivial to pass through. They are designed to protect something important. Either there is some good loot in the next room or it opens to a hew level of the dungeon. No one is going to put a puzzle lock on the door to the staff cafeteria so don’t throw random puzzles at the PCs in random rooms.

- In a ruins decay and rust can create trap and puzzle analogs, for example the rope bridge over the chasm is badly decayed and may or may not be safe to cross. Don’t call these analogs “traps” or “puzzles” even if they serve the same purpose. A trap or puzzle is intentionally designed.

aglondier
2020-05-30, 07:15 AM
One I like to pull out occasionally is the Prayer Wheel Dungeon. The very act of passing through the dungeon provides spiritual power to the creator. Every death that occurs within is a sacrifice in the name of the creators patron, made more potent by the purity of purpose driving the players. Hell, have the creator be the 'concerned civilian' who hires the party to deal with the 'monster threat'. Any time things get a little quiet, have another band of monsters move in and need removing. Eventually the creator will be ready to make his move, and can be revealed as a big bad who has been manipulating the party for years...

Vahnavoi
2020-05-31, 02:48 AM
If you want to make dungeons for exploration, you have to think big and stop thinking of dungeons as obstacle courses. The place should have a function and interesting things to find and figure out even when absolutely nothing is threatening the players.

Let's take a classic and think about an abandoned temple. Forget about traps. Forget about monsters. Neither are present. On the surface, it's just dead and silent. There are multiple entrances. One can come and go as they please. But if one pays attention, there are ritual implements scattered around the complex. There are several worn statues with pedestals before them, as if awaiting an offering. Inscribed on the central altar, there is a description of people presenting round stones to the statues. One sphere has fallen just off a pedestal. Another has rolled under a stone bench. A third is under a pile of rubble left by collapsed roof. So on and so forth.

Every sphere has an unique inscription. Some of the statues have matching inscriptions, others have had theirs destroyed by time. But if one looks around, there's a partial mural showing position and inscriptions of some of the statues when they were intact. In the priest's room, one can find remnants of a holy book, revealing yet others. So on and so forth. Through careful exploration of the complex, it's possible to piece together a significant religious ritual, which would otherwise be impossible or extremely laborious.

Use the same thought process to things like factories, mines, wrecked ships etc.. All things that are made to do something, and if one can understand what, they can be made to do it again. It doesn't have to be something that can be achieved easily or quickly, either in real time or game time. Sometimes, the right answer should be to travel a hundred miles back to civilization and come back with two hundred retainers to man every part of the mechanism. Sometimes, the last missing part is being auctioned off in a harbor somewhere, or entirely gone and the player characters have to make a replacement themselves.

Trask
2020-06-05, 12:46 PM
Make every room have at least one thing the players can interact with, and don't be afraid to be a little strange, but also don't make any one thing so overly complex, and try and give it a sense of place in the environment or at least a reason for being there.

I'd say a minimum of 20 rooms is necessary for a real exploratory dungeon, because in exploratory dungeons there should be plenty of rooms that are not occupied with enemies (about half, I'd say). And of the rooms that do have enemies, a good portion of them should not be immediately hostile.

SirBellias
2020-06-05, 02:33 PM
The only puzzles I can justify are ones that the inhabitants of the complex have a reasonably quick way of bypassing. Otherwise there's no reasonable way they can keep it set and use it as a base of operations.

A good way as others have posted would be to include a time element and have the inhabitants react over time. If there's something that the PC's spend time on, the enemies probably have time to get into position, summon reinforcements, get messages off, cast spells, release some manual traps or monsters, whatever...

One that I've been experimenting with lately is puzzle monsters. A monster that would be overpowering or at least very difficult to defeat without finding its password, weakness to exploit, or power source. For instance, the main base of a militant warforged faction has as their final layer of defense in their main vault a gray render that has some magical equipment strapped to it that allows it to behave like an ethereal marauder. They have to get through it somehow, and it would be able to kill any normal band of adventurers, but it will not stop attacking them unless they leave the area it can do this in or perform a set of actions detailed in a library they just murdered all the guards to.

Riddles or passages taken from texts about similar situations may be relevant useful for clues, and they still have a chance to screw up the execution, but finding and using this information will make it substantially easier while slowing down the party considerably.

I'd only do this for end bosses or for the main guardians of a dungeon or something.

Mr.Sandman
2020-06-05, 08:18 PM
Another thing that is underutilized is considering what the creators can do that others can't, and how they might use that in building things.

An example: A dwarven city, made up of the equivalent of dwarven manor houses- the 'rooms'.
Each manor house was locked in a distinctly dwarvish manner, useing a series of slightly different stones as a combination lock. Like leaving a key under the mat, there is some clue nearby to help the party open each house, but it would take a knowledge check, using Stone Cunning, or some kind of puzzle/ game to get through. The owners would have known the combination, so it would hardly inconvenience them, but be effective at stopping intruders.

Vahnavoi
2020-06-06, 11:55 AM
Make every room have at least one thing the players can interact with, and don't be afraid to be a little strange....

I'd like to highlight this because it's great advice for computer games, but not so much for tabletop RPGs. The reason lies in the different way these are constructed. In a computer game, if you didn't specifically program an object to be interactable beforehand, it is just static piece of the background. In a tabletop RPG, the GM can open-endedly decide interactions, based on their entired lived experience, on the spot based on player input.

To give an easy example: in a tabletop game, if there's an empty square room, the players can still suggest that:

- they tunnel through the floor or ceiling
- they collapse the entire room to bring down whatever's above it
- they write text on the walls to serve as a message or warning
- etc.

And even if the GM thought of none of that beforehand, they can look at how that room connects to the complex around it and have it create interesting consequences.

Another example: instead of thinking too hard of what's in a room, a GM can just write down that it's a kitchen and imagine it in their mind as a such. And as long as they can get players to approach it as a kitchen, it will allow for complex kitchen-like interactions, even if they never spent thoughy beforehand on just how many forks there are in any given drawer.

EDIT: a shorter way to say this, to go with "think bigger" theme earlier:

Don't fill rooms with interactable objects, think of the rooms as interactable objects.