that leaves the players imagining it
long after the adventure is done on the
topic of dungeon design the editors of
dungeon gave me some advice early on
which which says think of your location
as a character and as having a
personality and then try to bring that
character and personality out in the map
design like if your villain is a mad
wizard who is built a dungeon that
dungeon probably isn’t symmetrical
because mad Wizards don’t think
symmetrically and frankly symmetry can
be death in a dungeon design because
then the players can meta their way
through it but if a dungeon was built by
you wan T what does that actually mean
well I doubt you want to you would use
stairs generally snakes don’t like
stairs they probably have lots of ramps
everywhere things to coil around there
might be basically fire poles like
pillars with Geyer shapes in them so
that you want you can coil their way up
to higher levels around these pillars
but like players are like how are we
gonna are we going to deal with that I
think that thinking about the dungeon as
a as a as a being or an entity or a
character to be fleshed out is good
because then you can start making notes
to yourself of what are the types of
things I can put in the dungeon that
really bring it to life so you’ve got a
good hook to bring the characters into
the adventure you’ve got good villains
or good villain pairing or a villain
with a twist to sort of inspire the DM
to run that adventure because they love
the villain so much and you’ve got a map
that is a character in and of itself
that a DM says I love this map I can’t
wait to run this adventure because this
just seems like a cool location do you
need to have all those things
no do you need to start with all those
things absolutely not
whenever I come up with a new adventure
there’s always just one idea in my head
and it’s usually a villain or a location
or a quest and I take that idea and then
I just build around it and often the
first things I build around it I don’t
particularly care for and I throw away
it’s like oh I want to haggle and uh but
I’ve I’ve done hags in this other
adventure I don’t want to do them again
or hags have been done to death over
here I have an idea for a vampire
villain but I just did you know we just
went through burro via and straw and all
that I don’t want to do a vampire again
Oh unless it’s maybe a dwarf vampire I
haven’t seen one of those in a while
there right yeah you know or or I mean
what other kinds of vampires are out
there could you have a vampiric treant
probably never seen that before this is
a bit of a plug but the Monster Manual
contains a wealth of adventure hooks
every monster entry if you were to read
it invites the DM to take that monster
and build something with it there’s
there’s something there it talks about
that what you know what the monsters
like what they hate what they do why
they do it just by reading one of those
monster entries you can typically come
up with two or three good adventure
ideas and that’s a good way to sort of
start with a villain first approach in
some cases you just want to create a map
of something I’m like this I solve the
time for things and I don’t even know
what they’re for like I don’t know what
the end game is with the map there’s no
adventure to go with it and as I’m
drawing the map it’ll occur to me what
lives there and why and then the
adventure becomes well why is this
interesting to the characters
why do they want to go to this location
Thank You Kris Birkins for being on Dean
D beyond I’m Todd Kendrick thank you for
watching
Designing Dungeons to Inspire Stories in Dungeons & Dragons with @ChrisPerkinsDnD https://t.co/PPfWxqWE60

— D&D Beyond (@DnDBeyond) May 3, 2018