Happy Megadungeon Monday!

It still feels weird to type that. And it’s still a little tricky to know what to do next with this project. The biggest part of the project is, of course, drawing the map. I mean, really drawing the map. Like, down to the individual rooms. Which was sort of the point of all this “exit map underlay” bulls$&%, right? But I know once I jump down that rabbit hole, this project is going to become “How to Mapping: The Blog” for a lot of weeks. And that might get boring. But, I’m pretty sure that’s at least part of what people wanted. And, after all, when this first started, the project was “How to Spreadsheet: The Blog.”

All right, look…

I didn’t want to restart this poor, forgotten, beloved project with a bunch of pontificating about how to restart a project and why it was delayed for so long and all of that crap. And that was the right decision. A lot of people told me so. And thanked me. After all, no one wants this project to become “How to Excuses: The Blog.” Followed by periodic nine-month intervals of nonactivity. I think we can all agree we want some kind of conclusion here. I just want a goddamned Megadungeon.

But I want to take just a minute to discuss how I’m going to approach this project going forward. Because the format of these posts might change a little near future. No, don’t worry, I’m still going to overexplain my thought processes and overanalyze things that probably don’t need the overanalysis. But I’m going to start addressing this more like a design blog than a series of articles. Basically, I’m going to pick up the project each week for eight hours – or whatever – do some work on it, and then explain what I did and why. I’m going to be a bit more casual. And, I’m not even going to invite the Heretical Hasse to proofread and edit this crap. Because this is basically my thoughts-out-loud design blog. I will, however, proof it myself for grammar and s$&%. And run it through Grammarly. I’m not a barbarian.

That means a couple of things. The length of these articles will probably start to vary greatly. And it also means I might bounce around from topic to topic and thing to thing. For now, I’m going to stick with mapping for a bit. But when mapping starts to get old, I might switch to statting up monsters, designing magical items, working out plot details, or even looking at presentation issues.

I’m going to do that because I feel like this project has become more about me writing ARTICLES about the project and less about me BUILDING MY DREAM DUNGEON. And that killed a lot of my excitement. I spent a lot of time before this project fell apart worrying about which order to explain things and how to present s$&%. I was writing the articles as I designed. And I know that killed some of the momentum. Moreover, I know it’s dragging out the project. I don’t want this to take two more years.

I always said this series was for advanced GMs and adventure designers who wanted to see some serious design work. And those folks should be able to keep up with me as I bounce around, as I play with things, and as I figure out just how the hell to design a project like this in the first place. And they should be able to tolerate articles that run a little short and involve mainly thinking through a design problem while I’m showering and pooping. Though, for the sake of all of our minds, I will not describe the things I’m doing when I’m thinking about design.

Basically, I’m going to let the design work take the lead and, each week, write a blog post about what I did and why I did it. And then analyze the crap out of that. Maybe that will work better. Who the f$&% knows? After all, I’m inventing every bit of this goddamned process, including the party where I’m trying to explain the goddamned process while I’m inventing it.

Okay, with all of that said, I’m now saving and closing this document while I pull out all of my crap for my weekly work session. I’ll come back in a few hours and tell you what I did.

Later that Day…

Hey all, did you miss me?

I have to admit, I kind of like this time-skip format. Maybe I’ll stick with it. Do a little discussion before I start working, then work, then come back and talk about what I did.

Unfortunately, this new approach created a problem almost immediately. Because I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to accomplish or write about today when I created the file and wrote the introduction, I had no idea what name to give this file when I saved it. And I have a thing about names. Which is pretty funny considering what I ended up doing today. And the whole issue is formatted in the title I have now given this article: The Power of Names. Though, I was also considering calling it Doodles and Names. Because that’s what I ended up doing. Doodling some stuff and naming some stuff.

Exciting, no? Well, it’s more important than you think. Especially given that, what I was really doing was overlaying the backstory of the dungeon onto the map. Because, if you want a site-based adventure to tell a good story, you have to let the story help build the map.

All right, let’s go through this one step at a time.

Where the Hell Was I

First, I spent a lot of time organizing s$&%. I fully admit that last week, I just jumped right into the whole exit map thing. I opened my Campaign Cartographer 3+ file and picked up exactly where I’d left off. See, a lot of people – when they restart a project – waste a lot of time reviewing s$&% and organizing s$&% and trying to figure out what the f$&% they were doing nine months ago when the project got brushed aside. And that’s a great way to NOT restart a project. You can spend hours organizing and reviewing, days even, and never actually do anything. But I wanted to actually restart the project. So, I just grabbed something and started doing it.

So, today, I spent a lot of time organizing all of my doodles and sketches and spreadsheets, looking over them, admiring them – I really do like the hand-drawn flowcharts and day maps I made – and just generally absorbing the project back into my head. Which wasn’t that hard. It was like a song. Once I started singing along, I remembered the words. And then I skimmed a bunch of the old articles, more or less at random, just to remind myself of what ideas I’d had.

It worked, but it’s not very interesting to talk about. But it did remind me that there was an element of the project that hadn’t ended up on the exit map that was going to have to get incorporated if I was going to actually draw any rooms and hallways. And that’s the backstory of the place.

And that’s when I started doodling.

Doodle Mapping

When you’re trying to create an impression that a dungeon is not just a series of interconnected rooms to fight through, but rather a real space, you need to spend some time thinking about the space as a whole. I mentioned that before. It’s the idea of geographical consistency. When the heroes can trace a river, for example, through various rooms in the dungeon to its source – even if they can’t follow the direct path of the river – it gives a sense of interconnectedness. It also helps them navigate by giving them landmarks. A feature that crops up in several rooms and connects to itself is the dungeon equivalent of a mountain peak you can see from anywhere in the valley and therefore navigate by.

Now, I have had that idea in the back of my head pretty much from the beginning of the project. It’s why the dungeon is divided into regions. It’s why I placed certain exits where I did. From the very beginning, I was designing a site, not just a game space. And at each step, I was working from the large scale to the small scale.

At some point, I’m going to hit the smallest scale. I’m going to have put pencil to graph paper and actually draw out each and every encounter space – each and every room. But the more I know about each individual room before I have to start drawing it, the easier it will be to do that. That’s why I started by constraining the size of each encounter space and then joining them up with exits. But the map is nothing than a bunch of joined-up boxes that have been grouped together into geographical regions with evocative-sounding names like Desiccated Sanctuary and Sacred Halls. I need a little more to go on than that.

So, I assumed that my next big step – at least for now – would be to pick a region and try to draw an actual, honest to God dungeon map of it. With furniture and squares and terrain and all that crap. You know, something to fold up in poster form and put in the back of the book. Because, be honest, you love poster maps of dungeons as much as I do.

The obvious choice is the Desiccated Sanctuary. It’s basically the entry point. And, to be honest, it’s the first region that popped into my head back when I dreamed up this project. And, to be even more honest, it’s basically a rip-off of the Chozo Ruins from Metroid Prime. That area resonated with me, dammit. I wanted it in my dungeon.

To draw such a map, I’d need some sense of the actual architecture and geography of the region. What is it? How is it designed and laid out? What does it look like? And what kind of features exist in it?

Now, Desiccated Sanctuary is an evocative name. Desiccated means dried out, devoid of water, and preserved. And a Sanctuary is a place of peace and safety, but it can also be used to describe a nature preserve. And that’s basically what I was picturing from the beginning. An area that had once been a garden, sanctuary, and nature preserve, but that had been dried out and preserved. In my head, the color palette was all neutral tans and browns. Sepia toned. A place that died and was frozen in time.

The plot of the dungeon adventure demanded that water had once flowed in abundance. And if the area was a garden, sanctuary, and nature preserve, that implied that canals and pools had been constructed throughout the place. That makes sense anyway. But the canals had dried up because the water flow had been diverted. Moreover, though, those canals – if water flowed through them again – would provide passageways through the dungeon. In their current state, dried up, they did not allow passage. How would that work?

What if the canals weren’t merely dried and empty. What if they were full of something that wasn’t water. If they had drained very slowly and the water had been mineral rich, they would have left mud. Mud dries to sand. If we allow for the seismic activity that has rocked the region to cause cave-ins and drop rubble and debris, we can allow for a sort of desertification. Yes, I know it’s a little ridiculous. But, come on, it’s fantasy. And there is a lot of elemental magic in the place.

The husks of the dead plants have petrified. The canals are filled with sand. Sand is great because you can’t dig through it. It just keeps collapsing on itself and filling in. But it will wash away easily once a strong flow of water is restored. So, all of those passages that can’t be used until the floodgates are open are actually canals between rooms choked with sand and rubble. Once the water is flowing, the players can wade through those passages. Or raft through them. Whatever.

So, I took the map in Campaign Cartographer and added a “Sketch” layer. That’s basically a way of grouping map elements so they can be manipulated, hidden, or erased all at once. And, I added some heavy blue lines to the map where I thought the major canals would flow.

Ignore the brown blobs and green boxes for a moment. Just look at the heavy blue lines.

I knew the canals would start where the passage from the Source of the Flow came down. I used the floodgate-keyed turquoise exits as a guide. And I added two outflows from the mountain. The first, in an otherwise dead-end room, I envisioned as actually spilling from the cliff-side exterior of the dungeon, feeding a stream, and flowing into the valley below. The second one flows out the main entrance of the dungeon. I figured it would be nice if the main entrance had a canal alongside it, one that flowed down some sort of terraced fountain deal along the stairs that lead up the main entrance. Nice, right?

I also admit that the main entrance canal provides a navigational path from the entrance to the dungeon to the main gate into the Sacred Halls. The gate that the party would open on Day 3 that represents them really getting into the main area of the dungeon. That makes the Desiccated Sanctuary a sort of outer area. It’s sort of like the dungeon equivalent of the temple grounds or the front yard. Nice, right?

Now, that gives me some geographical features to incorporate into the rooms. But that still doesn’t say much about the architecture. Oh, sure, I basically had the idea of “natural preserve and sanctuary, but underground, petrified, and dried up,” but that’s just a theme. What are these rooms, actually? To figure that out, I had to think about how the dungeon was built in the first place.

Backstory Draws the Map

Let’s go back to the founding of Oran Ionath. Once upon a time, a group of wood elves from the valley below the dungeon allied with a dwarven clan from the mountains, right? The dwarves were at war with a bunch of giants and the elves knew that if the dwarves got overrun, the giants would probably eventually conquer the valley. So, the wood elves sent their own army to join the war. One of the elven warbands gets badly routed in the war and is forced to flee into the mountains and hide from the giants. They discover a cave in a mountainside and take refuge therein. Exploring the cave, they discover a passage into a hidden crater in the mountains. The crater is fertile with a river running through it and is overgrown with lush plants. And it’s dominated by a massive tree. In the shelter of the great tree, the elves recover their wounds and rejoin the fight. Many years later, the leader of the warband returns to the site – which he saw as a blessing of nature and the gods – and begins to construct a sanctuary and retreat in the caves and around the tree. Others come, the sanctuary expands, eventually, a temple is constructed in the heart of the mountain commemorating the four elven gods. And then…

Well, we don’t have to run through all of the backstory. That’s the first chapter. And it is mostly the story of the Desiccated Sanctuary and the Great Tree. But how does that backstory translate to a map?

Well, roughly speaking, the Desiccated Sanctuary can be divided into the eastern half and the western half. The eastern half is where the adventure starts. The heroes arrive, fight the kobolds, and then eventually make their way into the crater with the Great Tree. There’s actually a pretty direct passage right to the Great Tree from the eastern half of the Desiccated Sanctuary. We can imagine that that’s probably where the original tunnel was that led the elves to the Great Tree. That implies that the eastern half of the Desiccated Sanctuary is mostly made of natural caves. In fact, the whole Sanctuary started as natural caves. Some were left untouched. But as the Sanctuary expanded, the elves probably improved and expanded some of the caves. They built walkways and canals and stuff through the caves. Eventually, they even built chambers of their mine, digging them out of the natural rock, possibly with the help of their dwarven allies.

That tells us a few things. Most importantly, it tells us that there are basically three types of architecture in the Desiccated Sanctuary. First, there’s natural caves and tunnels. Second, there are improved caves and tunnels. Those are basically natural caves with things like walkways and art features and patios benches and gazebos and pools and stuff added. The sort of crap you’d add to a Victorian garden. Except they are being added to caves. Among those are probably some caves that are actually fissures and canyons and sinkholes open to the sky. In fact, a lot of the Desiccated Sanctuary might be open to the sky to let light through. Otherwise, plants don’t grow. Third, there are completely artificial chambers. They were either dug from the rock or started as caves, and they have been walled over and paved and turned into rooms.

And all of those rooms – the improved caves and the artificial chambers – all of those rooms are focused on, meditation spaces, relaxation spaces, art spaces, and so on. This whole section of the dungeon is one big garden, art gallery, and nature preserve. And because it was built by elves, the spaces should conform to the natural rock. Even in the artificial spaces, the rooms should be somewhat irregular and leave exposed cave growths or natural pools or native rock visible.

Knowing that, we can now add some more doodles to the map. We can decide, for example, where the caves were when the elves first arrived. At least, in the broad strokes. This is just general. And that’s what those curvy brown regions represent. Those areas had significant natural caves or tunnels in them.

Notice that I actually expanded my doodles to encompass the passages that go from the Desiccated Sanctuary to the Great Tree. That’s where that first major tunnel was. It’s the oldest part of the Sanctuary. I added a few other caves, most notably a substantial cave to the west that encompasses the haunted Day 22 area and also lies at the Source of the Flow. I figure that water was flowing naturally from the get-go and the elves channeled it with their canals.

I then figured out what spaces the elves had substantially improved. That is, what areas they had built up so much that they were primarily artificial spaces. I boxed in those areas in dark green. And I basically just plopped them down like I would plop down buildings on a landscape. After all, that’s really what they are. The dungeon equivalent of structures and buildings surrounded by the caves that are the dungeon equivalent of the natural grounds and gardens. I added a structure to the cave around Day 22. I’m not sure what it is yet, but it was special to one of the four leaders of Oran Ionath. That’s why they are haunting it.

I also added a few structures wherever there were rooms with locked doors, just because the locked doors imply artificial construction.

Now, all of those lines are just rough guides to how the Desiccated Sanctuary was constructed. They are a representation on the map of the backstory of the dungeon. Here there were caves, here’s where they were built up, and here’s where the place expanded into purpose-built artificial structures. But they will help in designing the individual encounter spaces.

And speaking help designing the spaces, do you know what else will help? Names.

The Power of Names

As I mentioned above, I have a hard time working on anything without a name. Naming something makes it real. Giving something a name is calling it into being. Invoking its existence. Yeah, I realize that sounds like a load of bulls$&%. But, it’s true. We are linguistic beings. We think in language. And the act of naming something is assigning a word to an idea to fix it in our mind.

I regret not discussing how I came up with the name Oran Ionath. I did that very early in the project. Mainly because I had to. If I just kept calling this thing “the megadungeon,” I’d never get anywhere with it. F$&%, I even have a title for the module. It’s called Expedition to Oran Ionath. It’s deliberately meant to invoke the 3.5 era revivals of the some of the best megadungeon adventures of all time. At least, the best until I came along and brought actual scenario design concepts. I refer, of course, to Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk and Expedition to Undermountain.

I was so excited when I saw those products. It’s a shame about the actual contents. What a letdown. But I digress.

Names. Orna Ionath. Right. I ended up searching a number of online glossaries of fictional elven languages, especially the Tolkien version of elven, the Faerunian version of elven, and the Elder Scrolls version of elven. I knew I wanted to name this place “the sanctuary of the tree” or something like that. So, I looked up the words sanctuary and tree and a few others. Eventually, I found a few words I liked, and I mutated them. I don’t remember which particular words I used though. I am fairly sure that “Oran” is derived from Tolkienelvish for “mountain,” as in Orodruin, “the fiery mountain.” I can’t remember where Ionath came from. But, in my mind, it works like this. Oran is the word for “sanctuary” or “retreat.” Iona is the word for tree. And the suffixes -ath or -eth mean “blessed” or “revered.” Oran Ionath: The Sanctuary of the Blessed Tree.

Consider that a little bonus tip about how to name things. And if any of the players speak elvish, there’s a fun translation that says something about the elvish language.

Now, I said that one of the keys to making navigation easier was to ensure that each room had some sort of unique, identifying feature. That would give an identifying detail for the players to include in their notes and maps and help each room stand out. It would also ensure that every room would be at least a little interesting, even if there was nothing to fight or discover.

Meanwhile, we also want to make it easy for the GM to keep track of where the players and coordinate the map locations with the text of the adventure. Of course, there will be a numbered key. But it would also help if the rooms identifying features – visible on the map – were also somehow called out in an obvious way. And that’s the basic concept behind room names.

If you look at most published adventures, you’ll find that they name their rooms. Room 1: Entry Hall, Room 2: Solarium, Room 3: Outer Library… and so on. That’s just a good practice to follow. But those names end up being pretty pedantic. And they don’t do much to stoke the imagination. And, I imagine, the names are assigned after the map is drawn. Or as the map is drawn. “I’m drawing a bedroom, that’s what’s here. Bedroom.” Right?

I want the names to be more evocative, to tickle the imagination, and to provide a shorthand for the room description. That way, when the players pass through the same room later, the GM can actually use the room name, and it will just sound like the sort of name the players would have given the room. “You pass through the Room of the Great Seal, turn left, walk down The Hall of Faces, and then enter The Vault of the Three Dragon Skeletons.”

Basically, I’m asking these names to act as shorthand descriptions, navigational aids, and memory triggers. And since I’m already doing all of that, I might as well also ask the names to serve as a design tool. What if – crazy as this sounds – I name the rooms first. Given I know roughly the architecture and purpose of the room based on its location and the underlaid sketch of the various geographic features, I can probably assign a neat name just by throwing together some adjectives and nouns. In some cases, I might have a firm picture in my mind of what the room should be and just name that. In other cases, the act of naming the room might conjure a picture. And, in still others, the name might be gibberish until I start drawing.

So, given that I’m going to start mapping the Desiccated Sanctuary with the area that corresponds to the first day of adventure let’s see if we can go through and conjure up some neat names.

Let me start with three names right off the bat that all sort of came together: The Seal of Oran Ionath, the Grand Causeway, and the Gateway Concourse.

So, we have the entrance to the dungeon. It used to be just a cave entrance, but the elves probably improved it as Oran Ionath grew. And when they constructed the temple in the heart of the mountain and built the doorway into it – that’s the passage from the Desiccated Sanctuary to the Sacred Halls that the heroes have to open from the back after escaping from the Crypt of the Ageless – after they built the entrance to the Sacred Halls, they needed a sort of “main hall” that runs from the mountain entrance to the temple entrance. This is a natural cave space that was improved. But in keeping with elvish architecture, it’s probably not been improved too much.

I envisioned a large tunnel – or even a gorge or cleft open to the sky – running to the door to the Sacred Halls. The elves built a road or path through the middle of the tunnel, a raised walkway or avenue running through the otherwise natural space. A causeway. See?

A concourse is an open space at the entrance to something. A main gathering place. A plaza or patio. And this one lies just inside the gateway to the mountain, which implies a large, arched opening. Perfect.

Of course, once one gets to the gain, there has to be a big, fancy room that is somehow dedicated to the space. Something that identifies the location. So, where the causeway approaches the doorway to the Sacred Halls, there’s a large mosaic in the floor depicting the symbol of the dungeon and perhaps even spelling out its name. It’s helpful to give the players the name of the dungeon right from the get-go. Thus, the Seal of Oran Ionath.

The two rooms to the west of the Grand Causeway are, according to my doodle, on the terminator between natural caves and the more artificial sanctuary spaces. And because they are just off the entrance, they should be spaces that show off the art and design of the place. A place for guests to wander just off the main hall. A garden and a reflecting pool seemed like good features.

Of course, these days, the garden is petrified. And the passage beyond the garden is blocked by poisonous vines and roots that have grown from the evil plant brain in the Great Tree. So, I can picture an ancient arboretum now filled with the petrified stumps of dead trees. And roots and vines have grown out of the ground and strangled those petrified husks, leaching whatever minerals and nutrients remain after the long centuries. Those same roots and vines have choked off the western passage. Strangled Garden seems like a nice, evocative name for that.

The other room has a reflecting pool in it. It’s on the doodle of the canals and pools and stuff. But there are probably several reflecting pools in this place. Elves probably love reflecting pools. They can’t get enough of them. So, just calling it the Reflecting Pool wouldn’t work. Of course, these days, the reflecting pool is filled with sand. But once the water flows, it won’t be. So, I can’t even go with the Buried Pool or whatever. So I sat for a minute and thought about how else I could define the room. And, in the end, I realized that reflecting pools usually reflect something. Otherwise, they’re just pools. What might they be reflecting?

Twins!

Yeah, I have no idea what that means either. I think the word came from the fact that I was briefly thinking about just putting TWO pools in the room and calling it the Twin Pools. I don’t know who the twins are. Or even what they are. But they are surely being reflected. Or they will be when the water is flowing again. Until then, they are just the twins.

They are probably statues of two very similar looking elven siblings. And there might even be an inscription and a little bit of story to discover. I don’t know. The point is just to name the rooms, not to answer every goddamned question. Yet.

East of the Seal of Oran Ionath, there’s a side room that the party is actually very likely to end up in. The reason is that the party is likely to follow the Grand Causeway north before they head east and thus end up at the Seal of Oran Ionath. And after discovering the massive doors are too heavy and huge and locked and barred to open, they will start to explore the side paths. Now, a dead-end side-path needs to pull the heroes in somehow. If they can just stand in the doorway and see that it’s a nothing room, they will just look inside, shrug, and leave. And that means we can’t have deathjump spiders try to kill them from above or anything. Boring.

This is a natural cave space, and it’s off the main entrance to the dungeon, so it’s another sort of decorative garden space. What if the space is actually a nexus for several small, private alcoves, like cells or meditation chambers. Being natural caves, we can call them grottoes. The heroes will have to enter the space and poke into each little cave. And in each, they will find… well, they are meditation spaces. And I instantly thought of those polished mediation spheres that people have in their gardens. Hence the Orb Grottoes.

I confess that the next two rooms to the east of the Grand Causeway have been in my head since early in the project. The Path of Watchers was just a name though. I had no idea what it meant until I wrote it on the map. And then I envisioned a winding path through a natural cave. It wound around masses of cave growths – stalagmites, stalactites, and columns – like a little hedge maze. Or at least a garden path. But some elven sculptor went and carved all of the growths into various animals and elven figures, all watching over the path. As a side note, the spikey terrain with a winding garden path will make neat terrain for combat.

The other room, the Sandblasted Path, is a hazard or feature I knew I wanted in my dungeon. I wanted a cave that featured a raised path running and around a sand-filled crevasse. Once upon a time, these were hot springs or mudpots, fueled by volcanic vents. But the water dried up, and now they are buried under the sand. But periodically, the vents still unleash volcanic gasses, and it turns the room into a sandy sort of snow globe. Whenever the heroes pass through, they might get scoured by a volcanic sandblast. And if combat happens in this room, it’ll be a little more exciting, no?

I also admit that, originally, the Sandblasted Path occupied the Orb Grottoes spot. But the heroes were unlikely to be drawn into a hazardous room that was essentially a dead end. So, I put it on the critical path anyway. I will have to assume the kobolds – as reptiles with naturally scaly armor and heat resistance – aren’t terribly bothered by the occasional sand shower. Perhaps some kobold guards might even try to pin the heroes down in the room. Something to think about.

The Orb Grottoes were originally to the south of the Path of Watchers. But I moved it when I moved the Sandblasted Path, and that left me with a dead-end room of no description and, again, no way to draw the heroes in unless they can’t see it’s a dead end. A winding, climbing tunnel leads up to a small chamber. A crack in the wall provides an overlook of the valley above which the mountain rises. And the wind moans and howls over the crack. Maybe there are even song stones – pillars or rock with holes carved in them to produce musical notes in the wind – scattered around the space. The sound, the daylight, and the fresh air will draw the party up to explore the space.

Finally, I was left with a room on the doorstep of two artificial structures – the structure with the locked door that will open up to the party on Day 4 and the artificial structure that serves as the side door into the Sacred Halls and will collapse under the party when they explore it. This room itself is a natural cave, and it also serves as the camp for the kobold raiding party that stole the MacGuffin that starts the whole adventure. It’s probably a permanent camp considering it’s also a chokepoint. It’s the way the kobolds come and go from the Sacred Halls in the heart of the dungeon.

I always think of warrens when I think of kobolds and goblins. They love fighting in windy, labyrinthine spaces. But why would the elves have such a space? Well, maybe the space was a nice, open cave once. But the seismic activity has left it choked with rubble and debris, turning it into a natural warren. And honestly, that’s a perfect bit of foreshadowing anyway. The party has just come from the Sandblasted Path, so they know the dungeon is seismically active. Then, they pass through a cave that was utterly ruined in some past earthquake. When they end up caught in a cave in and buried in the room beyond this space, it won’t come out of the blue. They will probably say “we should have seen that coming” instead of “f$&% you, you killer GM for literally collapsing the dungeon on us.”

The difference between screwjob and good narrative design is foreshadowing that only makes sense in retrospect.

And that’s a good lesson to leave off on for today. See you next Megadungeon Monday for more Mapping Malarkey!