Every time I sit down to design a fun dungeon, I get bogged down in the realism and believability of the location.
I focus more on questions like "where would the denizens sleep and eat?" instead of "what will the players enjoy?"
I know my players don't give a shit about that, but I just can't stop over thinking the design, and end up with a bland dungeon that has nothing fun or exciting about it.
How do I cure myself of this autism, or at least learn to channel it more effectively?
>realism and believability of the location.
This is my fetish. Keep doing it.
Don't come onto Veeky Forums, filled with autists who don't enjoy anything who will claim realism matters and shit over anything cool.
Use it to design a better dungeon. Old living modules were based entirely around that, figuring out the ecosystems of the dungeon while still providing a challenge.
I'd say, perhaps, that a common problem of this is assuming that everyone wants to live and sleep like a human does, with cut-out private beds or whatever. Most monsters don't care and probably just have a sleeping warren, a cooking and revelry warren, that sorta thing.
My recommendation is to put the 'extra' rooms off to the side and have the Adventurer's intended path being merely skirting the edges of their territory. They could eradicate the whole goblin settlement, but it'd take time, resources, and it actually goes out of their way to do so.
The rest of the dungeon is these small tribal communities fightin g each other. Why are there traps? Because these goblins hate those goblins and regularly capture, kill, then eat whichever they can with pit traps and net traps. Why is there a bottomless pit here? Because it was blown out by goblin sappers to keep the Otyughs on the other side out, but now it makes a good trash hole.
Make sure your dungeon is a clusterfuck of monsters, tribes, and races, so that the party coming into the dungeon never has a reason to get too involved with any particular one other than random encounters and that any particular action by the party will trigger ramifications with the other parts of the dungeon, like other tribes moving in and stealing their shit or Trolls moving into a convenient pre-made home, etc.
Play a setting where dungeons are created for adventurers instead of the other way around.
>or at least learn to channel it more effectively?
Play a system where that stuff matters:
Depends on the kind of dungeon, if it's a cave or natural setting you could drop hints of things that may be using certain chambers for bedding, or put certain food/water sources and the creatures nearby. Make an ecosystem for the monsters and animals on the dungeon.
If it's manmade then give it different entrances and exits, maybe one of those leads to barracks, or put those in the middle of the dungeon or a really out of the way place.
Of course try to balance the realism with interesting encounters, maybe if they get to the barracks they can be surprised by a group of guards/soldiers/bandits if they stay too long there.
Would love to run some OSR but some of my players aren't super keen on the idea, so mostly 5e these days.
Mmm, some good tips there. I'll keep trying to find ways to balance the believability with the fantasy.
Another thing that irks me with a lot of dungeons is that you've got a lot of rooms in relatively close proximity, meaning sound of battle should travel pretty easily. A lot of published adventures list rooms as self contained battle arenas, but with how sound would travel from a battle, I always find it hard justifying why everything else in the area doesn't come along and join the fight.
i'm currently struggling with this myself, but i'm trying to make a dungeon thats a castle, and i keep getting bogged down with all of the things that a castle would realistically need, but which really aren't important for a dungeon crawl.
>some of my players aren't super keen on the idea, so mostly 5e these days.
Run a one shot. Wait a few sessions, then run a 3-4 session campaign.
If they still can't get into it, 5e is the closest WotC has gotten to OSR.
Force your players to do things without rolling dice every now and then.
Start infrequently, but ramp it up over time.
If that gets their goats, roll dice behind your screen but ignore the result.
>I always find it hard justifying why everything else in the area doesn't come along and join the fight.
Otherworldly "Mythic Underworld"s notwithstanding, they should.
Put hallways between your rooms, or design the fights around enemies streaming in.
>and i keep getting bogged down with all of the things that a castle would realistically need, but which really aren't important for a dungeon crawl.
there's a relatively simple solution to this:
Make your dungeon crawls linear (ish).
Room A --> Room B --> C --> D, and so on.
Map it out on a scrap sheet as boxes.
Work out what each box is, as a location. ie, Gatehouse, the Kitchen, the throne room, whatever.
now cut up the crib sheet, and design the castle, with paths between those location, and then fill out the locations around each area, with the details that would make it work as a realistic area.
so, the kitchen has beside it the storerooms, and the castle well. There is then a route to the Throne Room - (because obviously the prince wishes to eat in his throne room). So the throne room is laid out, with its privy chamber, the anteroom, etc, which all go around it.
design your adventure, than put the peices together into a structure. for the route the players are likely to take.
>where would the denizens sleep
Anywhere.
>and eat?
Anywhere.
Keep in mind that most monsters don't give a damn about eating or sleeping in proper rooms because they're either animals, savages or undead.
>How do I cure myself of this autism, or at least learn to channel it more effectively?
Get better players. They do exist.
I am considering this...
Design your dungeons as if they were Zelda dungeons is the solution.
If you want realism and logic in your fantasy RPG about murder hobos saving the world from Shotgun wizards your playing the wrong game.
Remind yourself that your players probably don't give a shit how believable or realistic something is.
>inb4 muh verisimilitude!
Ignore anyone using that word in any kind of serious context too. They're shitters.
I left my autistic party behind after they sperged out about loot for the last time.
never felt better.
The trick is to make something that is both realistic and cool. That is where it becomes truly god-tier.
Counting for realism also brings questions that can have even more fantastic and interesting answers than just magicing it away.
The problem with making something both realistic and cool is that reality is over *not* cool. Realism is always a little more grounded and unpleasant than rule of cool stuff is going to be. Honestly, the best thing to do here is to get a group that enjoys the realism that you seem to enjoy as well.
Rule of cool is fine as long as it isn't applied roughshod across the board with "lol magic"
Internal consistency is more important.