Urban Dungeon

>>48742173
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City
Or space favelas. Shit only groes straight and ordered if there is something to enforce straight and ordered developing.

Same idea, but reverse. Go down.

You're raiding a baddies treasure trove, but what he considers treasure might be very different. As are the ways he's cataloged it in different rooms. Nevermind what might be guarding it.

>>48742224
Yeah, but even there you have the problem that you'd have endless doors that have no reason to be entered, and yet the space would feel wrong without them.

If you want variation say that at one point in time the mega-complex was built all neat and ordered but destruction factors caused parts of the complex to be of no use. Those parts that could be salvaged were saved and the no good parts were gutted out and replaced. As they were replaced new ideas about spacing and architecture took place so the renovated sections ended up looking different than the original sections. Add to the variation, maybe different construction materials were used, different safety codes employed, maybe the construction company got up and left halfway and a bunch of bureaucratic red tape has prevented any further developments there, or maybe renovated areas were split between several different construction companies who all had their own ideas of architecture. Maybe a gang or organization took over a section and remodeled it and the authorities simply said 'fuck it' and labelled that area a no-go zone.

Rinse and repeat a few times and there's your metroplex dungeon.

>>48742301

Wouldn't that be the point? I think endless doors and hallways would add a sort of labyrinthian feel to the setting. If you're worried players would spend too much time dallying around with these doors, that's the DM's job to remind them they have a job to do and there maybe penalties for door to door searching.

>>48742173
Purely residential, or a full-on arcology?

For a residential building, if it was a totally legit corp apartment complex, why would it even be a target, unless you're abducting a guy?

If it's not 100% legit, that opens up a whole host of options - some guys with sledgehammers knock through apartments to create big rooms, some corridors and stairwells have had doors or walls added, blocking them off - all you need to do is bribe the building manager.

There might be balconies, an atrium, community spaces or a courtyard.

People who live in the tower, how many of them have reinforced their doors, have weapons of their own, or have added cameras to the hall - are they spying for someone, or is it for their own protection?
Are entire floors dangerous due to poor maintenance and squatters?

There's a lot you can do with a vertical dungeon, and that's not even making it a corp skyscraper

>>48742173
One good method would be to have not all floors being apartment floors and not all apartment floors having the same lay out. A floor of studio apartments has a different floor plan than a floor of one and two bedroom apartments.

Imagine a "Megablock" more as a town in a single giant building rather than just a giant apartment building. Give it commercial (stores and restaurants), industrial (maintenance and illegal sweat shops), entertainment, park/garden/playground, and redlight floors in addition to office and residence floors.

Also individual elevators in skyscrapers do not stop on each individual floor. Major elevators only hit certain hub floors while other serve blocks of floors. You could even hide this with floors only accessed by specific elevators.

>>48742807
arcology is probably best, huh?

>>48742173

>Irregular buildings from the 50s upon which more floors were built, basements excavated and walls anexed.
>Russian mob meets drug cartels from latin america, meets murican kidnapping gangs, meets turk mob, meets itallian mafia.
>Civilians that can't pay to move elsewhere share space with niggers armed with AKs and rocket launchers (ability to retaliate from multiple floors at once, vehicles ever changing routes and units patrolling outside from cops [crooked and decent] plus criminals).
>Could buy anything for the right price, black market for satelite parts, cultural relics, information, organs, stolen tech, people, etc.
>Ground level sells more vanilla shit, dvds years before the movie gets exhibited (or even months before it reaches internet), designer brand imitation clothes so real that nobody could tell the difference, food stalls of all levels of quality, nationalities etc (from not very fresh cat and rat meat to five stars restaurant tier meals), small guns, ammo, tools, legal and illegal shit.
>Rent a guide: Pay a local nigga that operates legally as a civilian and knows where the best offers are, where is safe to eat, where you shouldn't turn unless you want to meet the mob, where to get decent call girls, buy reasonably loyal muscle, etc. Guides are the only ones widely trusted, since their trade depends on it. They can keep secrets for a small ammount of money, or keep you hidden; but unless you express your wish of travelling incognito, someone may pay another guide to track your ass.
>Drugs everywhere
>Russian doors plated with USSR old tank armor.
>Some doors are fake, welded shut, and trapped.
>Walls with hidden stashes, reinforced with metal sheets buried into the concrete or trapped with explosives.
>Rumored underground fighting ring where even a lowly fighter can walk away a rich man in one night, go away limping or die.

This place existed and still operates although in a much lower level than it used to.

>>48742173
Banks are the modern equivalent of dungeons.
So you could make some kind of super-bank tower that store a different kind of 'loot' in each floor.
So you get the floor with art pieces, another with secret software, another with military prototypes, another with all kinds of rare viruses and diseases, another with results of high-end bio-engineering and so on.

>>48743382
>>48742807
>>48742372
These are good ideas. I will use them.

Look up Kowloon Walled City.

>>48742173

If you are worried about the players spending too much time dicking around just give them a tool that points them in the right way to go or give them a specific address of where they need to go

>>48747384
Or a time limit, like inbound hostiles in massive numbers, or a fire - putting the players on the clock can make for some interesting scenarios, and should stop them just fucking about

File: 1458607663124.jpg (390KB, 620x1624px) Image search: [Google]

390KB, 620x1624px

>>48742173
For subterranean structures look at Otomo's Akira, for apartments his Suicide Paradise is pretty good. His megastructure is great as well, the Colonel's HQ from Akira. It's even in the movie, including hospital wings, secure hatchways, and utility tunnels large enough to fly something through that makes ZZZZZZzzzzzz!

For Arcologies check Shirow's Appleseed. It also does grown urban structures in contrast with large scale planning really well in several stages of decay.

Why you wouldn't just use your inspiration eludes me. The tower from Dread is great. The layout is perfect for RPG tactics.

If it were me I'd consider what I want it to symbolize. Is it a dangerous old research facility with countless biohazard and radiation warnings and things on the lower leves that should not be? Or is it a lawless fringe society of gangs that law enforcement had to give up on years ago to make way for a realm of violence and unspoken rules where anything has a price? Maybe it's a sterile manufacturing complex ruled by robots and a central AI? I just don't think the architecture is the first thing to worry about.

OP needs to watch The Raid

>>48751544
I've seen them both.

But that doesn't really help with designing the map structure because the raid was basically a series of corridors and rooms with disposable asians pouring out of them.