Scribbles and Horrors

I have discarded two notions about what dungeon maps are or ought to be, and would like to share them here. I’m speaking only for myself, and only about the kinds of dungeon maps I most often interact with: massive, sprawling underworlds. This blog post has been written hastily and badly so I apologize.

First Notion: We Absolutely Must Know Who Built the Dungeon, Why, and What it was Used For

I first started D&D with 3.5e as a teenager, and following the instructions that those books laid out was fairly frustrating. Drawing maps has always been fun to me, but the advice in those books had me constantly trying to squeeze my interesting game-spaces into some form of setting-logic, a discipline which demanded far more knowledge of people and architecture than I had, and also one which wouldn’t have made playing D&D any better.

I thought that in order for a dungeon to be “good” it had to be “realistic”. To be meaningful, it had to have direct reasons for all of its attributes. Each room must have had a purpose and a history effected by the people who built it. This really stifled my creativity. I kept drawing maps which I thought were interesting, but then discovered on analysis that they were unrealistic. Nobody would ever build a thing like this. I would say to myself, sadly, What things could go in all of these rooms, which make sense? Nothing! Nothing at all!

AD&D was a little better in that the Dungeon Master’s Guide provided a lot of options. I spent a long time reading AD&D’s “Room types” table, and tried to match each room in my dungeons to one of these. Still, I was stuck trying to invent coherent things for my rooms which fit into the boxes of NPC activity. I thought that’s what a dungeon was supposed to be.

Philotomy’s “mythic underworld” opened my mind to an entirely new approach to dungeons. Dungeons as a sort of living entity one its own; a Thing which exists, a place, yes, but not in the sense of a house or a building, where there are distinct design choices. Instead the underworld is the expansion of the fairy-tale castle: it is immense. The “reasons” for things being the way they are can be attributed to a bizarre kind of mythic logic. Confusing, unclear, or “random” dungeon elements can be folded into the mythic underworld mystique.

Still, though I had lingering in the back of my head that a dungeon must have some reason or explanation for its existence. I was still stuck in a “reasons” mode of thinking, although the Mythic Underworld concept offered a “reasoning” which could include the kinds of maps I like.

After reading The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures more and more carefully, I have come to a new understanding of dungeon maps, one which pushes past even the Mythic Underworld: the Underworld is drawn by me, the referee.

I mean this more than in the sense that a dungeon is a game-space designed for player interaction. While this is vaguely true, player action is not the reason the underworld exists. It exists because putting pen on paper to draw a map creates a Space, and the space will flow outwards across the page if you let it. It will sprawl in all directions, unfolding and repeating, looping back upon itself and leaping out into the void. It will go off the edge of the paper, and tunnel downwards. Abstract and mesmerizing, the dungeon goes on and on.

The drawing is an activity all itself, is what I’m saying. It is constructed through my interaction with the paper, through my instincts about rhythm and shape. Who built the underworld? Well, me! Because I’m the referee and the rules told me to, and once I started drawing I found I couldn’t stop.

Second Notion: The Dungeon is Primarily a Visualized Imaginary Place

The second notion was harder to set aside. The notion was this: the dungeon is an imaginary place, and we can draw maps and write keys to help us understand the place. But the map is not the dungeon, the key is not the dungeon, both of these are instructions for how to build the imagined space in our heads which we can then play within.

At the table, supposedly, the “true” place gets accessed through the words of the referee and the imagination of the players. Players take notes and make maps only to help them keep track of where they are.

The problem with this notion is that it does not match any at-the-table experience I’ve had involving dungeons. When players ask the referee what’s beyond a door, the referee looks at the map and describes what they see. The players–immediately–begin to mark their own map. They then stare at and add onto this drawing for the whole rest of the game. There is no intermediary imagined three-dimensional space; the dungeon exists on paper.

Literally, right there. The dungeon we’re talking about is marks on a page. The rules we use sort of treats navigating those marks as if it were a physical space–opening doors and so on–but the real, actually game we’re playing takes place on paper. It’s very tangible and literal. I have a drawing and I’m trying to get you to make a mostly similar drawing. If you use miniatures, it’s the same thing but with little pieces moving around. They’re not representational: they’re the thing.

This isn’t bad. Pen and paper games are fun. Moving pieces around is fun.

(I have had the idea of running a game entirely in a mind palace–no maps for any of the participants, no written notes of any kind, just spoken words and the imaginary. I think that some surprisingly complicated and beautiful spaces could be developed using this method. This would be a substantial departure from most RPG setups I’ve seen, though.)