Tips for a Dungeon!!

bump for anon

secret passageways, hidden vaults, multiple monster factions that are hostile to each other?

inb4 osr

>>54230951
A good dungeon should have a layout that can be readily intuited, with subversion of that layout present more and more the deeper you delve.
>whats this burrow doing in a crypt?
>Who dragged all these skeletons in to this pyraimid?
>Why did the runes on the walls of this abandoned stronghold go from dwarven to illithid?

>>54230951
complicated environment

Most dungeons have flat levels, sometimes with holes in teh floors of some kind, but they rarely deviate from that; so you should deviate from that. Have passages than angle up and down, have chutes and shafts that connect levels (maybe even elevators?) some of which should skip some levels (so the party might need to go up/down several different shafts to get somewhere), have walls/doors/ceilings/floors broken or breakable so that the party can find or make shortcuts, put rubble/slick blood or oil/high-piled trash or something like that in various places to make it hard to maneuver in combat, have boulders or broken pillars so that high-ground or jumping from place to place in battle can happen, have plenty of places to climb or balance on, put in a submerged or partially submerged area possibly with some ability to affect the flow or level of the water and maybe make some of the water murky or otherwise difficult to see in, make most of the dungeon pitch fucking black so that the ability to see is something the party has to think about, don't be shy about locks and traps (the keys/bypass mechanisms/triggers should be somewhere or you should know why they're not present if they're not), put in an overpowering enemy that must be avoided (or possibly directed at enemies) so that they'll make use of those abilities that rarely get used (like hold portal), don't be afraid to have enemies attack during the worst possible conditions for the party (like sharks in pitch black strong-current water halfway through a submerged portion of the dungeon, or climbing/flying monsters halfway down a loooooon shaft, or a big monster that grapples and throws people off the edge of a cliff or into a pit of acid), put in ambient life (rats, bats, insects, webs, vines, etc) that can be interacted with via the correct spells for info or utility, put in some areas where the party must squeeze or crawl (or even shapeshift into something tiny) to get thru

>>54234742
with this I'm imagining some kind of post apocalyptic abandoned junk factory

For those looking for dungeon concepts, i always use art station and look for temples.

https://www.artstation.com/search?sorting=recent&q=temple%20entrance

im sure some people are lurking and stealing ideas

>>54236545
well, yeah
dungeons in D&D aren't just regular shit like castles you know

>>54237173
not saying it was a bad thing, i love the idea