Where do I start?
There are a lot of different ideas on where to start, and where you choose to is up to you. If you're designing an entire campaign, you will likely find that your dungeons and adventures kind of build themselves based around what your campaign needs. If you're designing a standalone campaign, there are a few options for where to start.1.) The Villain
This is a good place to start either as a standalone or as part of a campaign. If your campaign has a villain already, he/she/it can be a good jumping off point for the current adventure or maybe the villain is a subtle presence driving the events that the heroes won't actually face until much later. Either way, using the villain can give you both a theme and a reason for the dungeon.
Perhaps the villain in your campaign or adventure is a powerful wizard who has stolen a powerful artifact and locked himself in his keep to do horrible things with it leaving the PCs to have to storm his keep and take it back?
Perhaps your villain is a warlord who has taken over a village and enslaved it's people to work in his mines as slave labor and your heroes must fight their way through to free them.
Or, perhaps your heroes are going to try to stop a local crime syndicate and eventually will find out that the big bad villain of the whole campaign was behind the crime syndicate they went after, and they work their way up to confronting him.
2.) The Setting
What do you want to design? What do your players want to run? Do you feel interested in designing a dragon cave? How about a jail or the tower of a crazy wizard? Some great advice is if you have an idea you really want to use, find a way to use it! You never know when your group might split up, or when they might go off in another direction completely away from what you expect and you might miss your chance... If you think it would be fun to do, DO IT!
3.) A specific trap/puzzle or room
This goes right along with that last advice... If you have a specific trap or puzzle or encounter in mind that you really want to use, DO IT! Find a way to work it into the adventure or dungeon you're creating. Do you really want to put in a dragon? Are you really excite for this great puzzle you came up with? Do you want your PCs to fight against a Lich and his undead minions? Put it in!
Creating the Map
Useful Tools:
I personally use some regular graph paper to draw my maps to begin with, I note everything important I will need to remember like the locations of monsters and secret doors/traps. I also recommend numbering the rooms in order to make it easier for yourself. Personally, I'm a big fan of using straight lines to make it easier to adjudicate for movement and LOS.
For the map itself that you will use for minis, I recommend a couple of things. If you want to pre-draw your maps, I recommend 1" grid lined easel paper or a Gamemastery 2-sided battlemat and some wet erase markers. If you have the money, using both is nice as well - the paper will allow you to pre-draw your maps, while having the battlemat on-hand will allow you to improvise when your players decide to do something completely random and you need to come up with something on the fly (that's not if, but when for sure, your players will always find something to do that you couldn't possibly prepare for in a million years.) Another option is using the Wizards premade dungeon tiles - although some DMs want to be able to be a bit more creative than these can allow sometimes as you are limited by what Wizards has printed.
For minis, there are a few options...
Unfinished Wooden Discs one of my players turned me on to these. You can use a pencil to draw or write on them, your players can draw a symbol to represent themselves or just write their name. They are quite useful, and also exceptionally cheap compared to other options...
Official D&D Minis These are a more expensive option to use. If you have the money, go for it!
Some other options to represent characters include things like beer bottle caps, glass aquarium beads or even the figures from the Dungeons and Dragons board games (again, rather expensive) Castle Ravenloft, Legend of Drizzt and Wrath of Ashardalon.
Other Important Tips
1.) Don't give the PCs only one way to pass an obstacle
If you put in a puzzle or a skill challenge, make sure that it doesn't stop the players completely, there needs to be some other way around the challenge or some way for you prod them in the right direction. Perhaps the puzzle they're trying to solve doesn't stop them, but when they fail to solve it they set off an alarm and the next encounter is more difficult, or perhaps you can sprinkle around hints about how to solve it or allow them to use checks to figure out pieces to help them put it together.
2.) Don't be afraid to steal
"Good writers borrow, great writers steal." -Oscar Wilde
Don't be afraid to steal traps/puzzles and encounters from other sources. I've used puzzles, traps and even just single enemies from all kinds of places including movies, video games and books.
(Indiana Jones is always a fun place to look for traps and puzzles, as is the Tomb Raider series)
3.) Don't be afraid to ask your players what they want
Feel free to ask your players what they like and what they want. Do your players like fighting big, epic monsters like dragons and tarrasques? Do they love HUGE encounters against tons of minions so they can wade into battle and just murder tons of bad guys?
Don't be afraid to give them what they want. I usually like to ask my players what kinds of things they want to see, and take note of them to work them into my encounters when it comes up.
Well, that's all for now - as always, comment below and let me know what kinds of things you'd like to see on the blog here and any questions you might have...
Until next time,
Your Humble DM
-Zach
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