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But how do you know? How do you ever know what is worth stealing? Sure, if looking at it causes a "wow" reaction, that's a fair sign there might be some worthwhile qualities present. Obviously, you want to use it if it is a good dungeon. But if a good dungeon is only defined by its purpose in an adventure, then how could it be good?

Well, obviously, there is more than one sort of good.

Last time I emphasized the importance of plagiarism, a contrast to my belief in the importance of context. The difference to remember is that dungeons will succeed in their roles of context in varying ways. If you are looking to remove a screw, you need a screwdriver. But there are different sorts of screwdrivers: Phillips, flathead, a bit on a power drill and those fancy ones they sell on late night television. There is some flexibility in what is appropriate in different situations. Not always, but often enough that it will serve as a generalization.

Each dungeon serves a purpose within an adventure. Each dungeon will succeed in that purpose to varying degrees. There is a neat fortress, and then there is the Citadel of the Really Evil Overlord. The basic forms of what amounts to quality remain the same regardless of the purpose of the dungeon. The above examples clearly show the one way that is not true, which is in degrees of power. Dungeons differ in their difficulty, and they will always need to. Power levels will always need to be in parity with their place and pace with the adventure, and the party undertaking them.

How does one get to quality? Think back to successful dungeons throughout your gaming career and two elements will stand out: creativity and consistency. The former is harder to teach, while the latter is harder to explain. I will start with creativity.

If I knew the magic words to write that would make you design more creative dungeons, I would not be writing this. I would be on the lecture circuit, and selling my creativity-inducing materials for an oh-so reasonable price. Faced with a summation here, I contend that creativity in dungeon - nay, in RPGs in general - mainly has a single focus: unusual connections. Anyone can introduce an unit of Kobold archers into a dungeon, and some people can do it with style. Some people can do it with tactical acumen. Both matter, but doing it creatively is a bit more nuanced.

Doing it creatively is hard to example because it is the unusual connection. It can be a matter of style or tactics, but it is more importantly a matter of the unexpected. To this extent, Kobolds have become clich�, which is what makes them a useful example. They were once at a level below mere cannon fodder, but people realized this had happened, and began being creative with them, making them, as a race, get smarter and craftier because it was such a paradigmatic leap from their previous incarnation. Now, everyone expects them to be more than they seem.

Someone, at some point, made an important creative connection. Here are expectations (Kobolds are pitiful and weak), let us provide the players with something that runs contrary to expectations (make them Scipio-like tacticians). The ways this can work itself out are many because player expectations will change, not only from game to game, but from player group to player group and over the time of a player group. So the goal is to keep it fresh. Freshness is achieved by doing the unexpected. It is about using a stereotype of any caliber, and then moving from it in an odd sort of way.

Creativity is starting the adventure in a dungeon and having it move to the bar. Creativity is making the pirate base a forgotten Ancient's site. Creativity is doing fun things in different and unusual ways. However, creativity is not solely the purely unexpected, which is a good entrance into the art of consistency.

When I railed against ecologically sound dungeons, it was partially rhetorical. Much of the campaign to support ecologically sound dungeons is really an attempt to inspire people towards consistency. Consistency is having a dungeon make sense, like ecology is. But ecology concerns itself with the wrong issues.

Cast your mind back to the temple in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Does it make sense from an ecological perspective? I do not mean are those tarantulas indigent to the area, but, in a hard ecological perspective that would surely apply. Simply put, that temple is outright useless as a temple. I suppose it would work as a place of worship, but all that dodging and jumping and remembering the right sorts of patterns make things awfully difficult. And the defenses! If you are that worried about losing your silly idol, lock the thing up! There are much better defenses than a large rock, which must be hell to reset, and having pressure plates that can be, more or less, ran past does not make them all too effective either.

In terms of ecology it is a mess, but it is a perfect dungeon in terms of consistency. There is a logical progression to the traps, and they work together in vicious ways. There is a constant escalation of difficulty. The dungeon fits the genre and expedites the plot, but moreover, it stands on its own. It has an identity that holds to some reasoned pattern.

To that extent consistency is somewhat antithetical to creativity. Creativity is about the unexpected, and consistency about the expected because there are always genre conventions to be lived up to. But the problem is not finding a room full of Kobolds, but finding the room full of Kobolds after facing down the dragon (unless, again, some interesting creativity is at work).

A dungeon should fit together. Under what logic? Under the logic that fits with the story. But in that there is logic at all, there will be qualities of the logic that transcend any one story.

Next week, Dave here is going to show us the easy way to make things 10 by 10.