Where do I actually start when it comes to mapping and stocking

>>50394254
Plan 3 to 5 interesting encounters, puzzles, or challenges, then connect those with hallways. Done and done. Mapping out large dungeons with several easy fights scattered in them is just busywork and a chore.

Donjon.bin.sh has everything you need.

Don't plan encounters. Make a map, put factions (3 best) in the map, put things each faction wants in the map (some in their own territory, some in others). Put some inherent dangers in there, some secrets (passages, rooms, treasures), and work out who else knows about them. Drop in a couple of weird useless things, maybe something really weird but potentially useful.

Make sure that the players have a reasonable chance of meeting each faction through exploration pretty quickly, then let your players loose.

>>50394254
You really should read the DMG. It explains all this.

>>50394254
Don't plan encounters. Players will know that they're planned encounters.
Plan a facility (prison/dungeon, secret trap-laden treasure vault, giant mole rat colony, etc) and go from there. Make each place have a purpose independent of the players to make it feel more alive (or dead, in the case of the undead). Just making sure that it's at least a little difficult for the players to get overwhelmed unless they go running through the tunnels shouting and clanging pots together.

>>50396893
Was coming to say this.
When making a dungeon, don't just make a "dungeon."

Make somewhere which has a purpose, fill the rooms based around that theme, and things can develop from there.

File: 1474487145621.jpg (541KB, 1300x836px) Image search: [Google]

541KB, 1300x836px

There's an article that gets posted a lot about the 5-Room dungeon model. http://roleplayingtips.com/readissue.php?number=156 It's a pretty good read.

In my personal opinion I would say that its best to try and keep your dungeons shorter so they can be completed in a single session. I've been on some 3 or 4 session dungeon slog and that shit gets old fast.

New poster here. Longtime GM. Good advice in this thread, even if some of it is different.

I'm a fan of "shorter is better" and the five room dungeon is a good framework. So is reading the step-by-step example in the DM guide. A simple secret door that leads to two or three chambers can be more memorable than a massive mega-maze if you do it right.

>>50394254
http://www.monstrumgames.com/games/

I direct all my dungeon-loving players/GMs here.
It's literally a flashgame that is nothing but a dungeon crawl.

If you want to do it, cool. Do it on your own time. Dungeons blow. Don't waste your player's time.

>>50398961
That's just, like, your opinion man.

>>50398961
You're an ass.

>>50399060
I mean it is just an opinion, but its one I agree with.

Dungeons are where RP and fun go to die. It usually just ends up being players going from door to door opening things to try and find where the 'meat' of the dungeon is.

This is especially bad in a lot of official modules (Like Pathfinder for instance) where dungeons are padded to the brim with 'flavor' rooms that do nothing but waste time.

>>50399326
Just how overland adventures are padded out with a bunch of empty wilderness that does nothing but waste time, right?

>>50399365
They certainly can, if the GM is the kind of person who likes random encounter tables.

>>50399326
It's more about being in touch with what the players want.

Let's face it: computer games and wargaming will handle combat better than roleplaying games. RPGs make sacrifices on combat efficiency for narrative reasons. Players are given more options of what they can do compared to the options a player is given for his unit of Longbowmen in a war game. Meanwhile computers make complicated combat maneuvers near instant because there's no need to go and roll dice, and moreover the flow of time in a game allows more choices to be made, faster.

If the players want combat, something other than RPGs should be sought out. Rather, (and this will be my one big generalization) players want a narrative attached to their combat. Otherwise they would be using war games instead of RPGs for combat encounters.
They want to know why they're raiding a dungeon, or why the dungeon is full of skeletons and undead. They want to gather loot and become more powerful, because it gives them greater influence over the campaign setting and the emerging narrative.

The problem is that these reasons are forgotten. Players who want combat forget the reason they want combat -- to win more power and influence in the narrative. Instead, they think they want combat because the combat is fun. So they make a ten level dungeon with a half dozen encounters per floor, and mini-bosses every three levels.

Instead of playing Megaten, Diablo, or some other dungeon crawler.

Dungeons are not necessarily bad. They are places for encounters to happen. But dungeons are bad, in that they've become self-contained entities. Personally, I blame WoW and the importance given to raids, but that's besides the point. The raids I've seen are well balanced and done, but they exist in a system that can have lots of combat, because the system supports it.

So since I'm low on characters, new GMs should focus on their storytelling and creating a narrative reason to go into dungeons instead of on how to balance one

>>50394254

My usual reply this to question:

What do you mean by "dungeon"? Do you mean the old-school "huge ruled pile 'neath a mad wizard's castle" or the modern, video-game inspired "linear string of five rooms ending in a boss-fight"?

The kind of game you're running dictates the purpose of the dungeon, and your map should cater to that purpose.

If you're playing an old-school RPG, the dungeon the centerpiece of the entire campaign: many levels deep, mysterious and inexplicable, and utterly inexhaustible (it can never be fully explored or fully "cleared" of monsters and treasures). The purpose of such a campaign is to explore the dungeon, and treasure (== XP) provides the incentive for the players to explore it.

If you're playing a more modern RPG, the dungeon is more of a diversion from the main storyline, a pacing device that proves variety and focus for one session worth of play. The purpose of this sort of dungeon is to provide a single adventure's worth of challenges, typically a few fights, perhaps one significant puzzle, and a treasure hoard (or plat macguffin) at the end of it guarded by an extra-challenging boss-fight.

The two modes are so different that there really isn't a great deal of overlap. OP must provide more information before any worthwhile advice can be dispensed.

here, this is a great starting point to give your dungeon a purpose - 100 dungeon concepts

http://web.archive.org/web/20150612192358/http://minesofkhunmar.blogspot.com/2014/11/100-dungeon-concepts.html

>>50399543
go read/play maze of the blue medusa.

>>50400899
If I'm inferring your point right from the reviews of the adventure I'm looking at, you seem to be agreeing with me?
That is, MotBM is about a singular, massive dungeon. But it manages to be fresh and interesting because of the narrative inherently tied into the dungeon, rather than just the combat encounters to be found in a dungeon?