Well, this is embarrassing. Yesterday, I had a little free time left after I cranked out the latest script for GM Word of the Week. Rather than knock off early – because I have a crap-ton to do these days – I decided to pop open Campaign Cartographer – which you can pick up on Bundle of Holding for a song. If you hurry. It’s probably down to a day or two left by the time this goes live – okay, this sentence has too many parentheticals. Aborting. Starting again.

I’m embarrassed. Yesterday, I found myself with some free time. Instead of knocking off early, I decided to open Campaign Cartographer and see if I couldn’t polish off a room or two. In the end, I completed the entire grand causeway procession of three rooms. I also touched up the Strangled Garden a little as my sketches started to look better. Add to that the fact that I had actually designed a SECOND room last week but the Megadungeon article went on a little too long for me to discuss it, and the Day 1 segment of the dungeon is half done.

Why is that embarrassing? Well, it’s because I forgot to write a little preamble before I started working. I just worked. That’s better for the project, of course, but it leaves me without a Long, Rambling Introduction™. More importantly, it leaves me without a chance to reflect on the work I’ve already done. And that’s an important part of any long project. When you start each work session on a big project, it’s good to purposely take a few minutes to look over the last little bit you did. Reread the last paragraph or three that you wrote, look at the last bit of map you drew, whatever.

But I don’t have time for that s$&%. I just started working.

Do as I say; not as I do. Trust me.

The Path of Watchers

After I finished the Strangled Garden, I jump into designing another room, the Path of Watchers. This is a natural cave that I envisioned as a winding path. A zig-zag. It would pass a series of speleothems – stalactites, stalactites, and columns that had been carved into various figures watching over the path. I wanted to establish that the people who built this place were artists, of course. But that they also incorporated the natural world into their art. So, the idea of finding the shape of the creature hidden in the cave growth appealed to me. In my world, this would pretty much discount dwarves as the constructors of this mountain sanctuary. Dwarves work in the practical, they are angular, they transform their spaces, they like clean geometry, and their art is geometric and iconic and practical. This sort of frivolity would be unbecoming a dwarven space: a detail which the GM should share with the players as they explore this space.

The name is also nicely ominous. This isn’t the Path of Sculptures or the Path of Cute Animals, this is a path of watchers. The founder was a soldier, and his first companions were probably themselves soldiers, retiring here for a peaceful, post-war life. They were guardians, and they’d respect the guardian ideal. So, all of the sculptures should be in positions of wary overwatch. Perhaps their eyes are decorated with glittering flecks of mica to catch the light from any torches or lanterns and glow eerily. Perhaps the heroes might even have a little jump scare as they mistake them for the glowing eyes of predators. Perhaps there really will be predators hidden in here.

Now, a lot of that isn’t going to come out on the map. That’s going to rely on fluff text and the ability of the GM to bring it to life. And that’s a long way away. For now, we just have to map an S-shaped corridor.

As before, we started with the outline of the room in red…

And add some white boxes to define the space. In this case, though, the space is a series of boxes along an S-shaped path. We want a flow, back and forth, from the entrance to the two exits:

But a winding path isn’t interesting by itself without a way to cut through the space. So we establish a few “shortcuts” that connect the zones:

Now, the path isn’t entirely defined by the walls. We also need places for carved cave growths that impede movement and provide cover but aren’t completely impassable. So, as we define our irregular, curvy walls – this IS a cave – we don’t QUITE follow the lines we defined for the path. It’s hard to describe, but look:

I’m trying to avoid having to spell out every step, but I’ll mention that I changed my box-lines to gray to drop them into the background and then used white to draw the actual cave walls as splines. So that gives us the hard walls and large columns. Columns are basically just walls. They go from floor to ceiling.

Now, we need to the spaces for the watchers. Basically, they are patches of cave growths, so I can simply outline spaces for them. And I simply use them to define the path further. I don’t block off the path with them. I want this room to feel, clearly, like a zigzagging tunnel.

Next step is just to get rid of all the sketch lines and label everything so that, when I come back to put art on the map, I remember what everything is.

Easy, right?

I’m not going into too much detail, but what makes this space tactically interesting is that it’s a hallway, but it’s got “cheats.” Normally, a hallway prevents things from flanks and makes missile combat tricky. Enemies at the end of the hallway can only effectively fire at the front frank of the party. But bending the hallway in on itself and adding a few shortcuts and terrain that blocks or heavily impedes movement, but allows missile combat over or through it, creates a hall-way-that-isn’t. Depending on what the party fights here, the combats could be very different. Ranged combatants could take advantage of the switchbacks to fire on the back line. Melee combatants can effectively hold chokepoints as the hallway is just wide enough for one character to hold it with a normal, five-foot-reach. But it’s a soft hold. A creature can use opportunity attacks against someone moving past, but it takes a full line of three to actually BLOCK movement. And then there’s still the switchbacks. Small creatures, flying creatures, and amorphous creatures can move effectively through the speleothems to outmaneuver and outflank the party. It’s an interesting space.

And notice how quickly we built that. F$&%, even describing the process got easier.

Now, let’s take on a bigger project.

The Main Causeway

Now, let me preface this with another embarrassing admission: I did a bunch of work on this section of this dungeon without turning off the transparent underlays. And that might make some of the screen-captures a little harder to see. The thing is, I’m so used to working with them, I don’t even really see them. I can just look “through” them and focus on the layer of information I need to see. Which is a major achievement for me. I remember playing the original Doom on my cousin’s computer back in the day. And I could NOT for the life of me use the map feature. It presented the map as an overlay on the game screen. I just couldn’t separate the map from the visual noise of the game. I couldn’t switch my focus. Now, I’m a goddamned expert. I should go back and play Doom. Oh! Or Dark Forces. Man, I miss when Star Wars was good and seeing that name meant a product was going to BETTER, not CRAP. Thanks, Disney. Thanks, EA. You all suck.

ANYWAY…

We’re going to take a slightly different tack here. I want to design the three rooms that make up the main entry hall of the dungeon. Those are the Gateway Concourse, the Grand Causeway, and the Seal of Oran Ionath. And these rooms have to include some important thematic elements.

First, despite being three separate rooms and despite a blockage between two of them, the rooms have to suggest they are part of one contiguous feature. Basically, if you look at a map, you have to be able to identify them as separate rooms, but you also have to see that they are one long, multi-room feature. That’s why we’re going to start by designing them as ONE feature and then separate them with details.

Second, they have to clearly imply that they are the main entrance to a major dungeon space. This isn’t just some dingy cave or abandoned mine that some kobolds are using as a camp. They have to be massive, impressive spaces that lead from the entrance – a massive open cave – to the actual gate of the structure. A gate the heroes can’t open. Yet. We want to tease the heroes right off the bat. We want them to know that, after they kill the kobolds and return the urgent MacGuffin, there’s a reason to come back. There’s so much more adventure here.

Third, we have to introduce the idea that the Desiccated Sanctuary is a tale of two architectures. To the east, it’s natural caves with minimal improvements and construction. To the west, it’s an artificial underground space, cut from the mountain, tiled and walled up. It’s a finished space.

Finally, we also don’t want to lose too much of the naturalistic feel. These were elves, not dwarves. Their improvements shouldn’t completely overhaul the entire space. The natural caves need to show through.

All right, those themes firmly understood, let’s start.

We’re focusing on the three rooms in question. There they are, with the canals running through all three. First of all, to pull this off, we’re going to lay the very basic outline for all three of the rooms at once. Basically, we’re going to start by designing the very basic outline for one big super room. But that’s not all, we’re actually going to outline the cave that USED to be here. Just like the elves, we’re going to start with a cave and then improve it. Let’s just start by figuring out basic the basic cave walls.

Now, it’s not quite as contiguous as I want. It is clearly three caves, three bulges, with connections between them. The southern “doorway” is particularly squeezed off. But we’ll leave it like that for the moment. See, the time has come for us to figure out how the restoration of the water flow is actually going to open new passages. I considered a lot of different ideas, most of them involving floating platforms or mechanisms that work on running water. But none of those really fit the theme that I am going for. They are too mechanical. And they are too video gamey. I know that sounds strange coming from me. Moreover, they are a little TOO telegraphed.

See, I want it to be clear that water flowed through the dungeon at some point. And I want it to be clear that the dungeon has also suffered a lot of seismic damage, which will telegraph the fiery abyss below and allow the “earthquake surprise” to be a surprise and not a screwjob when the party gets trapped in the catacombs. But I’m not sure I really want the party to be thinking too artificially about “opening the space.”

When they kill the plant brain and passages open up, that’s going to be a surprise moment. They won’t realize right away that they’ve transformed the dungeon. It’s certainly not something they can plan on. It’ll happen during their adventure. But it’ll be a goal they really didn’t know they had. So, it’ll make a nice surprise bit of “additional victory” added on to defeating the boss plant. But once they do that, they’ll now be expecting another transformation.

Of course, when they encounter flooded sections of the dungeon below – and lore indicated the elves purposely flooded the lower halls “for some reason” – and then they reach the floodgate, they will know exactly what they are doing. They will be draining the lower halls of the dungeon so they can go down there. And that’s what I want them focused on. But I want the transformation of the previous areas to again be a bonus, not the goal itself.

See, transforming the previous space isn’t really advancing the plot. It’s a sideways move, not a forward move. The forward move is draining the lower halls so they can go deeper into the mountain. Thematically, that’s where the truth is. The truth is always deeper. So, while it’s okay if the players accept the possibility of some transformation in the dungeon, I don’t want them to hit the floodgate and be thinking too hard about all those passages they could have explored. I want them to be thinking about how they can move forward. And downward.

That’s why, by the way, the critical path away from the floodgate leads them back to the entrance through an area with several exits that are opened by changing the flow of water. When they pull the lever and drain the lower levels, they will be thinking “goal accomplished, we can go onward and downward.” Then, as they head out to rest and ready themselves for the next chapter, they will say “oh, look at that, other doorways are open here now. The old dungeon has been changed by the flood. What a nifty bonus we didn’t expect.” And then, that leads to the choice between goal-pursuit and exploration – do we wander around and poke into these new rooms up here or do we go down into the depths where we know the real story is?

So, in the end, I have opted for floodgate passages to work like these. There are places where the dungeon has utterly collapsed. The hallway to nowhere I mentioned last time is one example of that. Some of those passages, though, had canals running through them. When the floodgate is opened, a massive rush of water will fill the canals, it’ll wash away and undermine the debris in those collapsed passages, undermining the rubble and creating channels through which the party can wade. But until that happens, it’ll just like more of the same impassable cave-ins.

And that is why I’m leaving the bulging wall between the Gateway Concourse and the Grand Causeway. Once, that passage was broad and open. But after a massive cave-in, it’s mostly choked off. Much of the rock has solidified and cemented together over the centuries, effectively walling it off. And impassable rubble stacked right up to the ceiling closes off the rest of the passage, waiting for the floodwaters to undermine it and wash some away.

The best part of this plan is: even if the party does recognize the impassable rubble as a potential transformation element that they will be open later, they likely won’t be associating clearing the rubble with water. They will be thinking in terms of, I don’t know, killing a dodongo and finding the bomb bag. Or finding a Chozo Statue that hides a missile upgrade for their crossbow. Some might guess at the floodgate thing, but it’s much less obvious than it would be if there were waterwheels everywhere connected to gates that are too heavy to move.

Anyway, having gotten that out of the way, let’s move on.

Now, what I need to do is start laying the artificially constructed elements over the natural cave elements. I’m going to start by focusing on the Seal of Oran Ionath, as it is the room with the most “artificial” parts. What I’m picturing is a transition from natural cave floor on the east to paved tile and masonry walls on the left. As if there are masonry buildings built into the cave wall. Or like a natural cave courtyard.

I start by putting down three boxes to represent “buildings” that project from the natural cave wall. One contains the great gate itself, one contains the passageway to the west, and a massive arch shores up the passage through which the Grand Causeway enters. I then square off the western walls.

That done, I zoom on and focus my attention just on the Seal room. I finalize the walls, remove the sketched walls, and then I focus my attention on the cave walls…

Which I redraw with a more natural-looking shape. I also clean up the intersections so that everything connects at precise endpoints. That technical detail will help me convert these to artistically rendered rooms later.

There we go…

Now, it’s time to focus on some of the details. First, the room is named “The Seal of Oran Ionath” for a reason. In the tiled portion of the floor is a great circular seal that will depict the symbol of the dungeon. That will probably depict a great tree, of course, perhaps with a mountain crater around it. And it will also be divided into four quadrants with imagery connected to the four founders and the four elven gods. Whatever.

Speaking of the tiled portion, I decide to define where the tiled portion gives way to the natural cave floor as well. That will strictly be an artistic detail. It won’t have any impact on combats. But it is important enough to the theme of these rooms that I should figure out the delineation now.

Now, that dug out corner looks a little odd. I decide to set it apart by making it a little elevated patio space. And I even put a pillar to define the corner. Now, this isn’t done for any brilliant encounter design purpose. In fact, I’m happy for this room to be a nice, big, open battlefield. The previous two rooms were very complex encounter spaces where the terrain was playing games with the fight. But it’s also okay to just have some more basic battlefields. Except for the canals and the bridges crossing them, this room is mostly open terrain. Some of it is tiled, some of it is bare earth, and some of it has a mosaic, but it’s just a nice, open space for a fight.

Speaking of that, I need bridges.

The patio thing is just because that corner looks weirdly empty and out of place. The masonry walls imply it was built that way. Why? Well, it’s just a little porch area.

I don’t like the look of the double-step. And the patio still looks strange. So, I add a little area of exposed earth in the middle that was purposely left untiled. Why? Because of a rock column or massive boulder that was carved into some artistic sculpture. That patio isn’t just a porch, it’s displaying a big sculpture. It was probably built around the sculpture, assuming the sculpture was carved into a natural rock feature.

Good enough. I add a few remaining elements, label everything, and call it done.

And now we move to the middle room. That’s the Grand Causeway. It’s just a big main road with some canals running through it from north to south. I do the same thing I did with the Seal. I start by figuring out where the artificial constructions are. This room, I mostly leave alone though. That is, I want it more “cavey.”

I clean up the walls…

And I bring the southern bulge right up to the western canal since that’s the part that the floodwaters will open up later.

And then I remember to turn off the background underlays… derp. Here’s what the Seal looks like without the visual clutter:

Anyway, after cleaning up the edges and intersections and making the walls nice, I figure out where the artificial floors end and the native rock begins. In this case, I want to create the image of a road running down the middle of the cave, so the center causeway is tiled floor, and the strips of floor to the east and west are bare earth.

To create the sense of a cave-in, it’s not enough to simply wall off the passage with impassable rubble. Cave-ins don’t have hard edges. Rubble should have spilled outward into the room from the cave-in itself. There should be a pile of rubble and debris stacked up against the wall and covering part of the southern floor. And it should have followed the channels of the canal a little bit, so it should spread further into the canals themselves. You can see the overall effect. It looks good.

Except…

I have to be honest, something is niggling at me about the edges of the tiled floor vs. the bare earth. They should be hard edges. The tiles should be laid over the bare rock and end as if someone stopped laying tile there. It shouldn’t be an irregular fade. That would imply sand and loose dirt is gradually spilling up over the floor. It’s the sort of thing you’d see in an outdoor ruin as the tiled area slowly gets buried and overgrown. In a cave, the edge should be much harder. The ground isn’t soil, after all.

So, I redraw the bare earth/tile edges as hard edges in dark gray. And I add a tiled floor edge around the south-western entrance to the out-jutting “building” that houses the hallway to The Reflected Twins.

And THEN, I go back and fix the edge in the Seal room. I even create a nice effect where the tiled edge follows the shape of the seal. I like it a lot.

Okay. We’re making excellent progress. Let’s handle the Gateway Concourse. First, I figure out where the artificial walls are, redraw the caves, and make everything come to nice intersections.

 

Then, I add hard edges for the tiled floor for the causeway. I stop them just short of the walls because I know I’m going to have to trim them back because there should be rubble on this side of the cave in as well.

I also add a couple of columns to create a clear sense of a Concourse – an open plaza and intersection just inside the entrance. The columns might hold up grand masonry arches that shore up the cave ceiling here. Too bad they didn’t shore up the passage just to the north.

Notice how the hard edges that divide the tiled causeway from the bare earth create the sense of a road intersection. That’s exactly what I want.

All that’s left is to add the bridges, complete the garden in the center of the western “avenue” and label everything.

And voila. The causeway is done. Because it is so thematically important, notice how we focused more on the aesthetic design than on its existence as a space for encounters. The trick is to realize there is always a trade-off between mechanical design (encounter spaces) and aesthetic design (thematic elements). While you can have both, sure, when you start designing, you have to pick which one to start with. With the first two rooms, we started by figuring out the traffic flow and the various zones of the battlefield. With the causeway, we started by figuring out how to divide the artificial from the natural and how the inhabitants constructed the space. Then, we looked at the transformative plot elements. Thus, in the first five rooms of the dungeon, we have a good mix of rooms that tell a story, rooms that provide a good fight, rooms that are tight and complicated, and rooms that are big and open. The key to pacing a dungeon is to always be mixing it up. One set of design tools just isn’t enough.

I’m going to quickly mention that, over the course of these first five rooms, the way I’ve been designing has changed slightly. My first room was very blocky and avoided organic lines. I wasn’t designing a map so much as laying the skeleton for a map.

Here, look:

But these last three rooms are actually more like real maps. Quite frankly, a GM could use these maps to run this dungeon. These certainly could get translated to a battle mat easily enough. So, I accept that I am not JUST designing, I’m designing AND mapping, and I go back and “fix” the Strangled Garden to match the new style.

And then I go back to the Seal one more time and fill in the rubble that blocks off the western canal passage now that I’ve decided exactly what that looks like.

And all of that leads to this current map of Day 1 of the Megadungeon.

I have to say I’m very happy with how clearly you can see that the causeway really IS the main artery when you look at that whole map. And how you can tell exactly what happened to it. It caved in and got blocked off.

Next week, we’ll bang out five more rooms in quick succession. And then we can move on to mapping another area entirely.