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And with this, wrote he, the theory would be finished. Mea Culpa.

This discussion over dungeon construction became far too theoretical over practical. Where I had hoped to discuss nails and material weights I ended up talking gravitational waves. No, that's not the best analogy. I ended up talking zoning laws and building permits, the social side of dungeon construction. Truthfully, this is the side that no one wants to talk about, because it is the dreadful side. It is the bureaucratic side, the dull side, the side that is all regulation and not creative freedom.

With this episode, we wrap up the politics. Next time is the mid-range transitional segment, and then we start talking how much earth to move. There does remain one final matter of obscure orchestration to deal with, and that is dungeon taxonomy.

If you have been paying attention, you will have noticed a sort of pattern to this discussion. There are complications that turn the issue of dungeon construction into a hefty test, and then always a cheat. Taxonomy is one of the cheats.

Taxonomy is the study of how to organize things, or at least the discipline that does the organization. There are many ways to organize things, and since we are discussing contracting let us discuss buildings. Say we took a small city, and set about organizing all the buildings in it. There would be many ways to do so, purpose of the building, style of the building, time constructed, and so on, and each listing with varying numbers of categories and subcategories serving a different sort of purpose well.

The taxiomatic guideline in dungeon design that is the most useful is "what is the dungeon supposed to do to the characters?" There are surprisingly few responses. The advantage of knowing the answer should be readily obvious. If the best dungeon is the one that fits the best with the overall adventure, but there are only a few types of fit, the matter becomes manageable for mere humanity.

To go with the construction analogy, there are an awful lot of ways to hold two things together: Screws, nails, bolts, and adhesives to name only a few. Each of these categories breaks down into many, many more, as a trip to the hardware store will tell you. But when a situation presents itself of how to join something, people first answer the question of what type should be used, and then move onto the more exacting matter of the specifically appropriate method.

So, let us to the list:

1. The Bleeder: Arguably the bleeder is the original type of dungeon. It exists for the sole purpose of nastiness. The bleeder is a gauntlet fraught with danger, sometimes irrationally so. It is as much a test of endurance as any other quality, seeing how far the characters can push it before they get slapped down. It is also the perfect dungeon for character aggrandizement. The more you kill, the more you can take. Bleeders will always have a place. They are so rootsy and Old Skool that people will always nostalgize them. Furthermore they epitomize what a dungeon is supposed to be about: a deadly violent place. It is easy to fall in love with a bleeder, because what they aim to do can be done so well.
2. The Organism: The organism aims for something approximating realism. It is an entity to be interacted with. What is important is how all the parts fit together and they will necessarily fit together in a nicely complex way. It survives in its own ways, the characters are only there to interface with the nominal goings on. For all I have railed against them, organisms are my favorite sort of dungeon. I like them because they remind the players the world does not necessarily revolve around their characters. Furthermore I like the strike team quality that such a dungeon typically engenders. Planning is the watchword, and complicated systems involve complicated responses. Of course, it is also the most demanding, in that if the systems are not up to speed the dungeon will not be. Similar ideas could be stated about the other two types, but, in organism, volume counts. It involves thinking and rethinking and overlaying levels of detail, many of which never get used.
3. The Storybook: Most dungeons exist to serve the story, but sometimes the dungeons contain a story within them. The point is not that most dungeons do not have a story of some sort operating in them (even bleeders have a reason as to how they got that way), but that in some dungeons, the existence of the story is the reason behind the existence of the dungeon. Generally speaking, to get away with this the story has to be both obvious and simple, one loudly screaming singular storyline that drives the dungeon. The story is the reason to go from one room to another, and if not the real reason the meta one, as the players want conclusion as much as the characters want whatever their goals are. This easily stands to be the most powerful type of dungeon, but reliance on a story is a virtue and a vice. You can't turn The Sun Also Rises into a dungeon, and there are plenty of bad stories out there that make serviceable dungeons.

These are the primary forms. They fit within that whole psychological expression of gaming styles known as GNS. The logic behind that is the take home topic for the week. There are plentiful other forms, but take these three as their primary colors. Some ones of note are the Rubik, the bleeder-organism where the puzzles are tantamount and the place is more passively hostile, the...Horror, a bleeder-storybook where all the death serves to evoke a nasty mood, and the Show, the organism-storybook where the players are more or less caught in someone else's dungeon story.

The nuances are fun to play with, but they are not the real utility of the matter. The utility comes in getting to recognize the different forms and when they come about. The utility comes in being able to recognize what you need at any given time. If you can identify that what the adventure is calling for is a bleeder with a strong storybook opening, it makes design much easier because you know the direction to aim.

It makes plagiarism easier as well. If you can identify what it is about someone else's dungeon that makes it tick, it is easier to strip and retrofit. While I doubt that we shall see the day when all dungeons are rated in these terms in the magazines, it could be done.

Stay tuned for next time, when we get in a violent fistfight with the owner.