A Bunch of Horse Crap
We’ve touched on the subject of non-humanoid PCs once or twice or thrice before. Designing your world to accommodate all comers is a tough mandate when we’re all a bunch of boring, vanilla humans IRL. And even worse, we’re a bunch of modern humans. We expect our conveniences to be designed into every nook and cranny of our fictional worlds. So not only are we hard-pressed to consider creatures very different from ourselves, but we also have to consider time periods.
So let’s talk bathrooms. That’s right. Lavatories. Outhouses. Water closets, johns, privies, latrines, the dunny and the head and and the shitter. Everybody poops, right? So what about all those dungeon denizens occupying rooms L2-L15? Our old pal Gygaxian Naturalism demands a bathroom for their comfort and convenience. But if you turn your head and squint a little, the absence of a bathroom can be just as interesting.
Anyone who’s walked through a living history exhibit can point to the various chamber pots and bed pans that ye olde times used to use. But that’s just a start. If you’re in a dungeon, what kind of scavengers rake your muck? Is there some kind of garbage pit? Maybe an enterprising wizard has outfitted a bag of devouring with a nice, comfy seat? Or you can even bait and switch your players with “recently dug earth” out back of the goblins’ camp. Buried treasure? Recently dug graves full of valuable clues? Or just another incredible smell to discover?
So for today’s discussion, why don’t we talk about all those “toilets” in dungeon design? To be clear, I don’t just mean the bathrooms. I’m talking about all the light sources, sleeping quarters, kitchens, and bedrooms that ought to exist in an occupied dungeon. Do you make sure to include them, or do you let it slide? Let’s hear all about the horse crap you like to deposit in your own dungeon!
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I really like adding the little verisimilitudinous touches to dungeons, right down to air vents if they’re inhabited by the living and disguises or defences built to keep those air vents from beimg a source of vulnerability. That said, unless the inhabitants of a dungeon are very wealthy they’re probably sleeping communally on the floor of a kitchen or great hall for warmth, and relieving themselves in a down-flowing underground stream or chamber pots to be used as mushroom fertiliser/tanning material/alchemical components. If it’s made by somebody especially wealthy or picky, though, i consider the hight of toilet luxury to be the set of latrines in a ring over a 9-foot-wide circular shaft leading down to a gelatinous cube in a box.
I remember going through the Eisenhower Tunnel for the first time and seeing all the ventilation shafts and fans and such. I remember thinking I ought to do more of that in dungeon design, but so far I’ve never followed up on the impulse.
Reminds me of the manga “Centaur’s Worries” that did go in a long way about how houses and cars and elevators and public transit and so on would have to be redesigned to allow for centaurs in the general population.
And yes, the image of a centaur driving a car is a rather funny one.
Well that’s ludicrously cute. Is the anime worth watching?
I suffer a bit from my day job intruding into my game design. As an Architect, not only does the lack of a kitchen, toilet, and sufficient sleeping areas cause me to twitch, but I am a sucker for demanding my dungeons are structurally stable – if there is a 6 ton dragon sat up there on level eight of that wizards tower, you can’t be skimping on the amount of columns and bracing on the lower floors, no matter how much you want a vast open entrance hallway for your first battle!
Of course note. You need to put the dragon at the bottom, since everybody knows that boss monsters are load-bearing… kill them, and the entire complex starts to collapse.
Do you draft your own dungeon maps? And more importantly, can I see them?
Last time I designed a dungeon, the ‘sewer’ was a lower level wherein the residents dumped their waste. That lower level was home to creatures that like to wallow in and/or eat filth, as well as… well, poop golems. If it dealt in disease ansmd foulness, it had a home in that lower level.
If adventurers went in, they would A: be nauseated by the stench, B: be exposed to an exciting array of diseases, C: be seen as meal delivery.
There were residential areas for the dungeon employees, too. They were hidden in the walls, so they could go about their personal affairs unobserved when not on the clock. They could also set off traps from relative safety, thus inconveniencing and softening up adventurers for the patrolling monsters.
That dungeon’s manager actually took good care of his employees, giving them food, entertainment, personal quarters, all kinds of amenities like running water and such, achievement-based bonuses and daycare. He did require his rules to be followed – and made sure daycare was right in front of his personal sactum, thus incentivizing his employees to keep adventurers well away from him.
Overtones of Tucker’s Kobolds here.
What did this kindly dungeon manager do that warranted the enmity of the party?
For one thing, he was fair to creatures and people who followed his rules. If you didn’t, he’d send his HR department after employees (and that department was always hungry), and outsiders got killed.
For another, he managed a dungeon inhabited by monsters with treasure sprinkled throughout; a sttandard lure for adventurers. A lot of that treasure turned out to have come from adventurers who expected a standard dungeon run, only to discover that the manager was wise to their method and had prepared for it. The dungeon was a meatgrinder of traps, which favoured the resident creatures working together and using hit and run-tactics. The manager had effectively reversed the dungeon formula, using adventurers to fund his operation. He even had a deal going with some of the local towns; they got to do business with the dungeon, none of the monsters ‘inconvenienced’ them, and they told adventurers passing through sob stories so they’d go into the dungeon and got mulched for their trouble.
Never have a wanted so badly to smite a bureaucrat. I hope the Manager got suitably trounced.
One word… otyughs.
I always loved this image from Curse of the Crimson Throne:
https://isembardstormhunter.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/otyugh.jpg?w=1000
TOILET’S OUT OF ORDER!
That otyugh looks like it’s done taking shit from adventurers…
I like how there seems to be a queue of civilians in the background, presumably all wondering why the adventuring party has been taking so long in there.
Otyugh: “I SAID IT’S OCCUPIED!”
The one megadungeon I created had near uniform 10’x10′ main corridors, with offshoots being far more variable. Players noted that all the side corridors were ringed by a particular set of runes. Several side corridors had small piles of garbage or refuse. Then, a random encounter had a small group of panicky goblins rush past them, just to duck around a corner and collapse, exhausted. Moments later the real encounter arrived…a gelatinous cube. The runes stop it from getting into the various living spaces, while the abundant “food” keeps it on the move…
You seriously do NOT want to forget about garbage day when you’re a gobbo. :/
If the Dungeon is a place where people live, I do generally try to include some form of living quarter, a kitchen and a common supply room (Depending on who is living there, a goblin horde will generally just have a pile). Having players find the living quarters can be a fun way of letting them find the minions personal items, the storage room as a way for them to find some extra common gear (Such as spare arrows and javelins), and you can do a lot of fun in the kitchen.
It also makes for some fun NPC encounters, as you can go “What does the chef of this place look like?” or “Are there any kitchen related conflicts within the group? “Does someone keep reheating fish in there? Maybe someone keep insisting on buying fruit that spoils quickly, forcing the group to constantly be eating it?
In my last dungeon I also had a common room, with board games, some small bookcases and such, for the minions. As well as a small bar. The minions knew the players were coming, so they had prepared an ambush further into the dungeon. But knowing that they played board games and read trashy romance novels while drunk did change how my players saw them.
For bathrooms, it depends on the group, what I want to include and often if I even remember. There are groups where I simply don´t have bathrooms in the dungeon for. Either because people within it would think it was gross and unnecessary or because I know it would just end up with a bunch of time-wasting toilet humor. Sometimes its best to simply not draw attention to stuff like that, least people start thinking about it.
But I have had some fun with it. For example I really enjoy Otyugh (Giant, garbage/sewer waste eating monsters. That are intelligent (…well, they are pretty dumb, but you can speak with them). Because I think there is something inherently funny, and to some degree sympathetic, about a giant trash eating creature who is just living their best life. And they kinda require a sewage system to function well.
I also have a running joke of having an archmage who put a sphere of annihilation in his toilet/trash system. Leading to one encounter where a player tried to dunk a minion in it, and another where a player tried to escape through the toilet, only to have to very quickly stop themselves and crawl back out (Another reason as to why I don´t include toilets, some players will try to crawl into them to figure out whats within. Through this can just as well be a reason to include them).
What, you don’t want to talk about medieval stasis anymore? 😛
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/medieval-stasis
I’m all for verisimilitude: if living things reside there, there must be a dedicated cooking area and either chamber pots or an outhouse. As for including them in “deserted” dungeons, it’s sometimes fun to have a “Hey, Scoob! It’s the kitchen!” moment and see if the PCs question why an ancient ruin or haunted house would have fresh provisions and still-warm kettles.
It still irks me that Haunted Halls of Eveningstar only bothers to include one privy, and then only because the dungeon designer wants to include a trap. Who isn’t going to be wary of that? “Wait. This is the first toilet we’ve seen in 5 years of dungeoneering. Why suddenly add this detail now?” Weaving this everyday designs into the campaign on a regular basis helps hide when you do slip a trap or treasure into the commode.
On the note of centaurs: as a kid, I always wanted to ship Talbot the CN fighter (from The Rogues Gallery (1980) p.46) with Brabu the thief (WG7-Castle Greyhawk (1988) p.10) for no other reason than they both had seen their adventuring careers suffer after being reincarnated as centaurs.
Yo… Brabu is barely more than a footnote! That may be the deepest cut I’ve ever seen, lol.
I do tend to pay attention to these things, not only because I want the areas that I build for my world to make sense to me, but because they offer the players many different ways of interacting with the space. Wells, garderobe shafts and chimneys can offer ways for characters to go up or down levels without always needing to find the stairs. Middens and trash piles are good places for characters, as well as monsters, to stash things to be retrieved later.
I’ve developed a habit of making it somewhat obvious when an area is sleeping quarters, because it telegraphs “stealth section.” Making a lot of noise right outside a barracks is a really bad idea, and I had a few TPKs back in the day when PCs managed to wake enough of the bad guys to find themselves outnumbered 5+ to 1 in short order, with more on the way.
In my own practice, including these elements is easier than describing them in the moment. Very often I’ll find myself glossing over the dungeon dressing in favor of the interactive elements. The obvious problem being that it’s an RPG, and EVERYTHING is interactive elements.
I generally include “Where do the inhabitants poop? (Or do they even need to?)” when designing dungeons.
I’ve got a player playing a centaur in an upcoming campaign. I did warn her that I’d allow it, but I’m not changing anything to accommodate for it. Pooping isn’t a concern I had considered, though.
Please extend my apologies to that player.
If you include a toilet, you need to figure out how sewage is disposed of. If you include a kitchen, you need to figure out where the food comes from. The more concessions to realism you include in the dungeon, the more it’s going to be analyzed for realism.
This isn’t me saying not to try. If the dungeon is based on real-world structures which were densely inhabited (like fortresses), these questions can be answered with a bit of research. But the more you indulge in fantasy, the harder it is to explain how everything works. Just moving the complex a hundred feet underground and removing ties to outside settlements ruins basically everything people do to survive in stone structures.
I mostly agree with this. Introducing verisimilitude can easily lead to people questioning when you don´t have it. Which can lead to a lot of extra work.
But at the same time, I also think it can be incredibly fun to try and figure out how they actually make it work. Especially when you start looking at it through the lenses of a magical world. Like for example showers using water creating runes, or the garbage dumb being an otyugh (that is growing worrying big). Which opens up for new potential issues, like what do we actually do with all the water we are summoning for our showers? Which leads to a new rabbit hole of figuring out how they make it work. But again, this is something that takes up time, that is perhaps better spent elsewhere.
Finding the dividing line between “fun” and “work” is a challenge in this hobby. And the hard thing about writing an advice column like this is that it’s a matter of taste.
For my part, I tend to skew toward the fantastic, making verisimilitude an afterthought rather than a primary concern.
I’ll likely have to touch on this biz in my academic career, as worldbuilding and fiction writing are VERY different practices.
Oh, absolutely. If you have an idea for how to make everything work, go right ahead and have fun with it! But if you only have a half-baked idea, you might be better serving raw cookie dough instead.
A friend of mine and I are going to be running a (supposed to be) oneshot (might go longer than one session :P). We’ve actually made a list of rooms we need to add to the main dungeon/bad guy home base (and luckily, it does include bathrooms. The villains may be evil but they’re not *heartless*). Now we just have to make the maps XD
Best bathroom I ever included lives in this one:
https://adventureaweek.com/shop/pathfinder/pathfinder-adventures/b20-rent-lease-conquest/
The medicine cabinet is full of healing potions. Which are full of larval gray oozes instead of healing juice. >:D
This is why all dungeons should be tombs or complexes filled with only undead, ghosts, or constructs. No need for kitchens, bedrooms, bathrooms, etc.
Just corridors, rooms, traps, and monsters you can’t sneak attack.
Of course I’m kidding. I took architecture in school, so like Glorthindel I include as much “realism” in my simulationism…
I’ve had PCs set fires in the kitchen’s wood storage, smash the clay pipes carrying water (or filth), had them ransack sleeping areas, and go full Goblin Slayer in the children’s play areas.
It’s true the more details you include the more “digging” the PCs will do and I find that a great part of the fun. Of course, if your group prefers a “beer and pretzels” approach or “nonsense” dungeons, hey, go full simplicity on that design. For those that might prefer this methodology, look into “5 Room Dungeon” structuring, you’ll find a lot of interesting articles on reducing things to the ‘bare essentials’.
(Which you’d htink with my minimalist approach to game prep I’d be into, but ironically no, I prefer to ladle in those detials during play, letting the dungeon take on it’s full details as they explore it.)
Side rant:
Gygaxian Naturalism has always felt backwards to me. To me, Gygax adventure modules were all about not bothering with those elements. Not carrying how the dragon got squeezed down 10′ square passageways, and the Ecology of a [XYZ] articles in Dragon magazine back in the day always felt like a rebuttal to Gygax’s philosophy of “A Wizard did it”.
So to me, “Gygaxian Naturlaism” has always felt like it was misnamed, lor like it was directly repudiating Gygax’s main philosophy in adventure design.
It’s a weird balance with “dungeon dressing.” I tend to write (and run) modules, and I like having a few significant details to liven up a room description. But if you add too much of that biz, it reduces a GM’s ability to improvise their own details. And that sort of improvisation can lead to the wood storage / clay pipes / sleeping area shenanigans you mention.
Have to admit, I’ve very rarely looked at the issue from the side of “writing modules for others”, because, well, I barely write modules for me. Even afterwards, it’s mostly all stored away in the pink matter, details from gaems forty years ago, neatly filed away in case we ever dust off those sheets and redelve back through those lands.
Of course, that might just be why it’s so easy for me to seat of the pants it. I’ve literally decades of dungeons locked away in my skull to snatch bits of. Not monster stats, or treasure charts, or anything like that, but the maps and legends and details fo the rooms. How this or that trap or trick area worked, etc.
I’m sometimes annoyed that I have “useless” nonsense like D&D trap mechanics (BECM, AD&D, 3rd ed, and 4e) stuck in there, but I can ‘convert’ the ideas on the fly… and I’m still kinda happy with stuff 4e did (as much as I hate D&D, 4e did some very interesting things to “officially” break open the paradigm on trap and encounter design – and yes, I’m one of the few who actually said “I like 4e” outloud on forums, and not //just// to feed the trolls.).
If I’m building a dungeon and it has a guard force then it has barracks, complete with bunk rooms holding beds and lockers (some os wehich may or may not have little ‘treasures’ hidden in them by the owners) rows of sinks and latrine stalls (showers optional) and a day room for off duty guards to hang out (finding a deck of many things being used to play cribbage or poker is not unlikely). Not to mention a kitchen area and mess hall. Ever tried to search a fully stocked communal kitchen ? it takes forever.
Using skeletons is a lot easier 😉
What were you looking for in a communal kitchen? You lose you keys?
Part of the job, it should take two Officers a good day to properly and thoroughly search an 8-man self contained living unit kitchen, with freezer and fridge. Management wants you to do it in a half hour or less.
I don’t make the maps but i like to include them 🙂
The lack of baths on games is fun. Skyrim doesn’t have baths 😀
One would have thought they would get a lot after all the shit Ulfric and the empire give each other 😛
Also including baths give the chance of making some jokes. Like in a dungeon when the party found a cache of Drow pornography for the enjoyment of those using the bathroom 😛
The party cleric found it disgusting, sinful and decided to keep it on their backpack for security 😛
My Drow pc asked to split the “loot” 50/50 to him 😀
I love that your cleric confiscated the porn “for safekeeping.” Our megadungeon paladin has a pinup scroll for exactly the same reason. Apparently the “scribe scroll” roll was awful, and it looks like a stick figure. XD
This topic was also touched upon in Delicious in Dungeon. If everyone pooped anywhere they wanted in the dungeon, things would get very nasty. So in high traffic areas, there are set places for people to do their business. It’s noted that they’re always nice and clean, even sometimes there are even vases of flowers in them. That’s because a character makes sure to regularly collect it to use for manure for their dirt golem farm fields.
OK. That tears it. I seriously need to watch Delicious in Dungeon. Onto the list it goes!
It’s not an anime (yet) it’s just a manga. Still, yes, you absolutely should read it. Plus it is in its final arc.
I always made a clear distinction between what I call “live” dungeons and “dead” dungeons.
“Live” dungeons are those inhabited by living creatures, which need the above-mentioned facilities, as well as ways to walk out the dungeon, or wander around without triggering traps, etc. You need indeed to give thoughts to the whole ecosystem here.
“Dead” dungeons are those entirely staffed with undead, constructs and/or summoned creatures (thus, that only exist within when they are needed). Thus the denizens can stay eternally in the same rooms with no need for food, water, sleep or entertainment, and the dungeons itself can be entirely sealed. They might include be a few living creatures that sneaked in and lives of scraps, but those are rare. The design of such dungeons can thus be very straightforward.
I’m seeing a lot of “this isn’t a problem in tombs” in this threads. It isn’t a dichotomy I’d really considered before, but it makes a lot of sense.
Is there some kind of article / DM Guide chapter that touches on this? It seems like a paradigm I missed somewhere along the way.
Generally speaking I gloss over the living requirements in the dungeon. On MOST of the maps I make, I include things like toilets, sleeping quarters, kitchens, light fixtures, etc. Most, not all.
Ultimately I’m working to entertain my players, and if time demands I only put in the encounters and the world, then that’s what we get. After all, building the world for everyone is hours I could spend doing other things.
First dungeon I ever ran was a “nonsense” dungeon. Room descriptions were things like, “Giant mushroom that explodes if you touch it. Treasure behind,” and, “Hedgehog knights riding roosters. They’re jousting, and challenge the heroes to join.”
There’s something to be said for minimalism and unbridled fun.
Last time one of my players opened a cupboard in the ruin of the mage’s kitchen she found a Pugwampi taking a bath in he built in magical sink.
Said Gremlin gasped, yelled “Do you mind!” and slammed the cupboard door in her face…
Well that’s freaking adorable.
I try to keep my dungeons somewhat sane. How do the occupants get in and out easily? Is there a back door? Where do they sleep, store their stuff, eat, cook, and do their business? Usually that means my dungeons are light on traps. If your bandits have to dodge harpoon traps and pit falls just to go forage for food, they’re probably not going to stick around long. Unless, of course, there is a cleverly hidden back door.
In the last campaign I ran, the party was all goblins. The goblins dumped their waste down a cliff in the back of their cave. This attracted an otyugh which the goblins then befriended and hired to guard the rear of their caves.
Relevant comic: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/weird-dimensions