Break Reality To Build Better Dungeon Maps
Constrain one thing to transform your dungeons.
Hola Game Master!
Continuing our celebration of RPT Map Week (make sure you swing by the #rpt-map-weeks channel on Discord to check out the daily hooks), I want to talk about the hidden rules dictating your map designs.
How Architectural Constraints Affect Maps
We often draw floor plans without thinking about the walls.
For example, a typical modern house has every room efficiently Tetris’d together. This is because of constraints: space, materials, cost, labour, time.
We often subconsciously draw our maps without questioning these constraints, transferring our modern assumptions directly into our adventures.
Therefore, a good place to start when drawing a map is by deciding on its constraints. Because our constraints dictate what the boundaries look like.
The Time of Map Makers
Change a constraint, you change the map.
We want to change our maps so they offer puzzles, ideas, and choices. Therefore, a simple way to be creative is to mess with the foundational rules of the build.
Start by focusing on just one constraint and play with the idea.
What If…
- There was infinite construction time?
- A special building material was available?
- A tireless labour force was employed?
- Gravity wasn’t a factor?
For example, let’s challenge the modern notion of time.
Time is scarce for us. In today’s world, time flies by because we’re constantly distracted. Every second of the day we can choose how to be entertained, we communicate instantly across the globe, and our focus splinters across 2d4+1 screens.
So we flip that constraint or lean heavily into it. We play the opposite game.
Think about a guild of dwarven stonemasons, an enclave of immortal elves, or a secluded monastic order of kobolds. Without our modern distractions they could choose one single project to focus their cumulative effort on for generations.
It’s incredible what that kind of unbroken focus produces. I think our modern minds unconsciously reject massive dungeon features, over-the-top traps, and labyrinthine layouts as unrealistic map design because we don’t have the time to build them. But in a fantasy world, that is exactly the type of stuff we want!
If our setting’s dungeon architects had decades and centuries to focus on carving giant stone heads, stacking massive stone blocks, and cutting incredible plinths, they would never feel forced to build something small, plain, compact, and ultimately, temporary.
One single constraint changes the architecture, and so the map.
It’s Your Turn
When we cast off the encumbrances of assumptions and modern scarcity thinking, we become more creative with our maps.
Next time you draw a map, roll or choose from the table below.
Take the result and:
a) Remove it completely as a constraint on your architects.
OR:
b) Make it the overbearing primary constraint that flavours the entire design.
d12 Map Constraints & Builder Goals
- Status (lavish facades, extravagant defences, over-large or luxury features).
- Time to Build (infinite focus vs. desperately rushed).
- Special Materials (carved entirely of bone, glass, fire).
- Labour Force (undead, giants, bound elementals).
- Magical Enhancements (anti-gravity, teleportation circles, permanent light/darkness/water).
- Environmental (built in volcano, submerged, floating).
- Security (kill zones, versus flying, versus monster type, traps in load-bearing walls/beams).
- Budget (limitless empire wealth vs. scavenged or salvaged scraps).
- Culture Club (must face east, only 90-degree angles allowed, must be circular).
- Space (inside colossal stalactite, tiny caves, cloud castle).
- Tech (artefacts as tools, mud and wattle, assumes all have one at-will power).
- Purpose (imprison specific entity, mechanism of power, fulfill prophecy).
Cheers,
Johnn
roleplayingtips.com
https://discord.gg/6MxTRAqQ76
Have more fun at every game!
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Image Credit: I licenced that map from Dyson Logos.
