Use 3 Dimensions

This post is pretty simple: When you design a dungeon, use three dimensions.

When we GMs look at battle or dungeon maps, they’re usually flat. (Arguably, they’re always flat, even if they’re isometric, but I digress.) This presentation encourages two-dimensional thinking, which influences our descriptions of what the characters experience.

Even the best cartography, maps which explicitly use height as well as length and width, can have this effect. Look at this one, from one of our favorite cartographers, Dyson Logos:

At first glance, it’s all on one plane/level/altitude. But it’s really not! It’s at least four, but it might be more if we think creatively. Leaving aside the Entrance/Guardian as one of the Five Rooms — off the map at upper right — there are gradients in altitude in each part of the cavern. Look at all those steps!

Here are some characteristics that popped out at me from a glance at this map:

• There’s clearly water in the central sinkhole. Presumably the roughly-hewn stone steps are slick and slippery.
• Where the space between the steps is narrower, assume the staircase itself is quite steep.
• Dyson doesn’t really indicate direction on any of the stairs. Even though the pool is clearly at the bottom of the sinkhole, the cavern room in the lower-right level could be above the pool, at the same altitude as the lower-left room.

These factors not only inform how the characters interact with the environment, they also hugely influence your encounter design for this map. Whatever lives there has to deal with the terrain all day every day. It’ll be far better prepared to unconsciously move around the place. If the stairs are wet and slick, it knows how to deal with that.

NB: You’d better describe the inhabitant(s) moving like that; it’s up to you to transmit information to the players!

If the world is perilous, the inhabitant(s) also know how to integrate the dungeon’s dimensional characteristics into their defensive strategies. Maybe part of their plan is to charge an intruder and shove them off the ledge so they fall many feet into the pool. Maybe it’s to launch missiles from higher ground.

Whatever map you’re using, look closely at it for changes in altitude. Use those changes to give what the players experience more depth than just moving pieces on a two-dimensional board.

Speaking of dungeons that leverage 3 dimensions, there’s one in our upcoming Kickstarter! The crypts beneath the castle in The Drowned Valley of Gorth most definitely use depth. Follow the project so you’ll get notified instantly on launch!