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Why is a dungeon there? Well, someone had to build it, but that's a topic for later. Why is it in your story? Why is your character going to one? It has a purpose to serve. What sort of purpose? Well, whatever reasons your character is going to one in the first place.

Dungeons are a funny kind of setting. They are setting because they are place. A dungeon is not an event, not a conflict, and not a character, but only a setting. It is an environment for things to happen within. But there seems to be more, much more, to what the dungeon is. A dungeon is a specifically interactive setting, which seems to be a somewhat silly concept. A setting, say a room in a house, is naught more than environment. Its description in a story is most often to reinforce some notion in a "show, don't tell" sense. It may have some detail to enable the process of a storyline, for instance a gun cabinet.

When that room gets a pit trap installed, the story becomes slightly different. Now the room is still there to enable the plot, but it is passively hostile to whoever might come into it. The same would hold of a blizzardy mountain. It is no longer just a place, but a conflict to be overcome.

The difference that I would put between that and a full-blown dungeon is the intent. Dungeons are always at murder 2, not manslaughter like the mountain. The distinction is one of intent. If the antagonistic quality is abstract, then it is not a dungeon, once it is directed at the characters specifically, it becomes a dungeon. Such a definition is arbitrary, but also functional. It is also specifically geared towards role playing games.

As a counterbalancing factor to the deadly directness, something can be done about a dungeon. Though the dungeon is hostile, it can be overcome. A setting can only be persevered through. In short, a setting is only environment, a dungeon is also plot. A dungeon is the representation of the conflict going on in the game. It may not be the dungeon itself that is being fought with, but it is the symbol of that conflict.

What are the implications for design? It is typical to think of a dungeon as contained environment. It is a world of its own. People may walk in to raid it or walk out to raid other things, but it has a hermetic quality. This idea, in itself, is not wrong, but it is a piece of a dangerous line of thought.

That contained nature is the reason why it is hard to write an article on dungeon design. I can never just abstractly design a dungeon. Certainly, I could sit down with graph paper a Monster Manual and come up with something, but what would I have? Not somewhere I should like to live. Would I have a dungeon? In the sense that what I drew was a dungeon, yes, but in the full gaming sense of the word, no. Because a dungeon is a conflict it must serve the plot.

I knew a Referee, a man by the name of Perry Lloyd, who ran a wacky game of GURPS. One of the items found in the game was the Plot Device. An old joke I'm sure, but this was the first time I heard of it. The Plot Device was a microwave sized box with a yellow button on it. Pressing the button would create motion in the plot.

However, hearing tales of the device in action drives home the matter of the marriage of plot and conflict. The players are trapped in an ugly game of politics with the Greek gods, someone presses the plot device and a group of Basque separatists appear and take the players hostage. Yes, something happened, but no that something did not have relation to extant conflict. Change the conflict and you change the plot because the plot is the story of the conflict working out. But change the plot, and you may or may not change the conflict. The same foes can be fighting in the same ways but with different dressings.

Again, because a dungeon is conflict it must serve the plot. However, this rule is more open-ended than it sounds. There are many, many ways for the plot to be served. For instance, if there is a pre-existing plot thread that the players need money, then having a dungeon where stuff is killed for the sake of money is perfectly sensible. But it doesn't work if the players are trying to solve the nine riddles of Layman Po because their focus is somewhere else. A dungeon for sheer dungeon's sake is meaningless slaughter. On the other hand, the tweaking between the two may be minor.

The best dungeons are the ones that best serve the story lines of the game they are currently in. Next time, come with us as we try to put new murder holes above the portcullis.