Honestly, as someone who really loves story progression, I hate dungeons. To me they have always felt like busy work that keeps me from the story. So, when I began GMing I was a little despondent trying to figure out how to create dungeons that weren’t a place where stories went to die. I couldn’t stand the thought of my campaign being set in a dungeon for several sessions, especially because that meant planning lots of combat and puzzles, two things I struggle with in campaign creation. I decided to figure out how to create dungeons that still have the feel of dungeon diving without sacrificing the story progression and pacing of the campaign. I may be alone in my opinion of dungeons, but if not, hopefully this post will help those of you who feel as I do.
The most important thing to ask yourself when creating a dungeon is, “How does it move the story along?” This is the biggest question you need to ask, before you ever get to the small details of your dungeon, because this question will help you decide whether or not this dungeon should exist at all. If it is just busy work, most players are going to lose interest. It should be connected to the story and have a purpose.
I find that one of the best starting places for discovering a dungeon’s purpose is asking yourself if it is a side quest or a main event.
Side Quest
If your dungeon is part of a side quest, it should be smaller and take less time to complete. Usually side quest dungeons are going to be player-led, meaning that their reason for being there is probably due to their character backstory or something they specifically want to accomplish, such as finding a specific magical item. If your side quest dungeons fit one of those criteria you are on the right track and they count as moving the story along.
For example, I once ran a campaign where a side quest took them to an underground bandit camp where they needed to find a specific hammer. This dungeon was small, three rooms at most. They went in, found their item, and it was done. It served its purpose without being dragged out.
Main Event
If your dungeon is a main event it will be larger and take more time to think through. These dungeons are the ones you need to be careful with. Because of their size, if they aren’t actively moving the story along they begin to feel tedious. A way to help this is to make sure every couple of rooms, or your dungeon’s equivalent, the players are learning something important. That could be finding an item they need to defeat someone, finding a piece of the BBEG’s plans, discovering an important NPC as a prisoner, or meeting a henchman or the BBEG themselves.
I once played in a campaign where two of our party members were taken captive. The rest of us had to sneak into the BBEG’s castle and free them before we could continue our quest. We went through several rooms just trying to figure out where the prisoners were being kept, and then we had to move our way through the rest of the castle to the location we had finally identified. The GM gave us little bits here and there to help us get to where we needed to go and then get back out. Because we weren’t caught in an endless loop of busy work, the small hold-ups didn’t feel as long since they had a purpose.
Conclusion
While creating dungeons is not one of my main skills, I’ve found that asking myself what the purpose is has helped me a lot in my creation of them. As I’ve tried to connect my dungeons to the story, both me and my players have enjoyed the dungeons more and the story has become more engaging. There is still a lot I have to learn, but I hope that this has helped some of you who were stuck like I was.