What makes a good dungeon

Agreed, I think the biggest issue is that you have to choose spells among a large number of options AND they have very limited casting, which is just too punishing and promotes meta.

But I think the concept could work in a system designed specifically for it, not just a mod of a D&D game.

 

In my opinion the best dungeons are the ones that you can't predict before entering.
Most of the times when I am bored/dreading going into a dungeon is when I'm thinking "Oh god, not MORE (puzzles/combat/inventory management) for the next hour."
When every dungeon has a puzzles, puzzles become boring/frustrating. When every dungeon is filled with combat encounters, combat becomes repetitive and empty.

A good dungeon above all else feels unique from every other dungeon in the game.

 

An exit that leads to the entrance of the dungeon, because backtracking wastes everyone's time.

 

*PTSDs furiously*


Whether Larian inclines BG from its fuckiness or drives it into the ground for good, I raise my cup to them!

 

I think Unexplored does something like that. The character progression in the game is strictly item based, and level generation takes that into account: it generates hazards together with items that could be used to overcome them. So if you e.g. come upon a lava-filled level, you can try to soldier it though, but there's probably a levitation scroll hidden behind a puzzle or a boss battle somewhere in a side dungeon branch. They're doing a similar but much more developed system for Unexplored 2, where all magic is context-sensitive, so e.g. a level could have a sprite that gives you waterwalking spell, but it's only usable in the same level - unless you have a super rare sprite container that allows you to carry this spell between levels. I'm very excited to see how it turns out.

 

Cool, yes, but that's actually the opposite of what cRPGs should try.

This is how it works in PnP RPGs and it works there because it doesn't need to exist as a canned option until one of the players comes up with this idea, because GM is there to evaluate it and follow up with reasonable consequences.
In a cRPG it just means going for CYOA rigid scripting rather than mechanics that could provide this form of reactivity everywhere rather than just once.

That's the problem here - the concept couldn't work in a system because the concept itself is of working outside of a system.

 

That's basically mechanics often used in puzzle generation - going backwards from known solution - except dressed up for an RPG. I think it's too weak to carry an RPG as core mechanics, but could definitely make an interesting addition to one, by generating a bunch of fitting solutions along with an obstacle.

 

I'd say a good dungeon has the following qualities:

It's too big to explore in a single trip. You'll need to escape, to heal, to resupply, to sell your loot, whatever. Your next trip will be more efficient because you'll have mapped it out somewhat, and be stronger than before. This is satisfying in a way that numbers going up is not.

It's unpredictable. There's no giant double doors before a boss, it just pops out of a random corner when you go to turn it. The hallway filled with poison moss might contain treasure, but it might also contain nothing. The pit trap that drops you to a lower floor might actually lead to treasure or even a shortcut to go forward once in a while. All this keeps things from getting boring and methodical.

It's tempting. It makes you want to explore one more room or hallway before going back because once in a while you find total game changers, like amazing equipment, or a new party member or huge shortcut or whatever. It's so tempting that you'll usually die on the way out rather than on the way in, because you over extended, not because you got taken out by a cheap trap you just found. If there is a means of emergency escape it should be both rare and costly.

It's mysterious. It needs to be littered with things you can't understand when you encounter them. Weird statues, altars, incsriptions, objects that are an exception to usually all looking identical. Some of these should be red herrings while others are things you'll be able to figure out on the spot if you're clever and others that you'll backtrack to much later with new information or powers. So you've got a reason to map and makes notes about everything, and think about the things you find instead of them just being eye candy.

 

Nah ! Baldur's Gate is great ! the first game has some atrocious dungeon design but still good. Baldur's Gate 2 was a huge improvement in this regard, and both games have two amazing dungeons: Watcher's Keep/Durlag's Tower.

 

The brilliance of Unexplored is that:
1) It generates such loops iteratively. So for example the levitation scroll could be hidden behind and item-based puzzle, to get the item for the puzzle you could have to fight a boss, which could have a weakness for acid bombs, which you could find behind a secret door.
2) Each situation allows more than one solution. So you could e.g. defeat the boss without using the bomb, and keep it for a harder encounter. And you could do the same to scroll - get it and still soldier though lava, saving levitation for a later situation. Or you could have a scroll of teleportation saved from a previous encounter, and just go straight down to the next level bypassing the whole thing.
The only problem I have with the game is the lack of character building beyond item acquisition. But that's something in the cards for Unexplored 2.

 

He specifically suggested going to The Glow blind, for this reason. Knowing you could kill the robots while they are on the ground - not many folks probably understood that on their first play through. Second, FO1 isn't like further Fallouts - you didn't look Rad-x or Rad-away on every opponent. I died of radiation poisoning by reading a Big Book of Science there (also by playing chess against that CPU).

Anyone playing it now would check a guide that says "Make sure you bring a rope and plenty of Rad-X!" I honestly don't remember if there was a numeric in FO1 that listed your radiation poisoning level.

About the Glow: That dungeon is almost entirely optional, can be done without fighting, is fantastically atmosphered, and contains actual information which can allow you an alternate ending for the final encounter. That's pretty impressive. On subsequent play throughs it may lose it's charm, but it still is a great dungeon.

 

Absolutely agreed mate

 

They tell you the place is a radioactive crater, bringing rad-x and radaway is a no-brainer. Doing time-consuming things is also something you won't do if you're actually thinking about what you're doing.

 

One dungeon immediately came to mind upon reading the article, and it matches both the criteria put forth by felipepepe and the ones given below:

And the dungeon in question? The Tomb of Praecor Loth from Ultima Underworld 2.

The Lore is that the great warlord Praecor Loth was eventually felled, and his companions literally carved his tomb out of a mountain. Then they interred his family, servants, and finally themselves to guard over Loth's final resting place for all eternity. Until the Avatar shows up asking if he can borrow the man's horn for a spell.

The Gimmick is that everyone's dead, yet the Avatar can converse with a few ghosts and high-level undead. The biggest gimmick is that the tomb ascends, which is very rare for tombs to do.

The Combat is passable for most of the tomb, but then one reaches the top floor and realizes it's three brutal fights against Loth's companions, an assassin-lich that deals in high-end poison, a wizard-lich with a huge assortment of spells, and finally a warrior-lich with maxed-out stats, putting it on par with the dreaded Destroyer-demon.

The Loot is a plot-vital item needed to complete the game: Praecor Loth's Horn. There's also the part where each 'world' has a blackrock item that needs to be found, and a 'focal point' which must be dispelled. The blackrock item is almost at the Avatar's feet when he arrives, but both the Horn and the focal point are in the same place: Loth's tomb. So the player must go through the entire tomb to get the prize and complete the game.

The Pacing is quite good. The first floor is an entryhall of sorts, comprised of basic challenges to not only grant access to the tomb itself, but to piece together a quintessential map for the third floor. The second floor is where all the 'lesser' tombs and graves are located, but there is still combat and exploring to do. The third floor is the main course, a jam-packed smorgasbord of traps, puzzles, monsters, secret doors and mysteries. By contrast the fourth floor is straightforward: Four chambers in a straight line leading to Loth's tomb, with short side-halls to help unlock each chamber in turn.

Choice is where the Tomb of Praecor Loth mostly fails, but only at the start. You can choose to go straight up, but then you miss out on the map pieces for the third floor. The third floor has a few secret doors and shortcuts, so many traps and travesties can be averted. The fourth floor is where things get interesting, though. In-game sources suggest that two of the three fights can be avoided, but in truth all three can be avoided by using an assortment of powerful spells, most notably the Portal and Fly spells.

Finally the Map Design. The first, second and fourth floors are fairly simple, but again it's the third floor is what it's all about. It uses about 75% of the available map space but it feels much larger due to how almost every turn and corridor has some kind of encounter, be it hostile, puzzling or mysterious. It's not a big dungeon (I'd say it's medium-sized) but also keep in mind that it's the seventh of eight worlds, and by that point most players just want to Get On With It, so it fits quite nicely.

What is missing from the above seven criteria is the Atmosphere. For a 1993-dungeon the tomb is imposing, and the build-up of suspense leading to the third floor is done very well, to the point that the fourth floor feels kinda flat by comparison.

EDIT: Typo.

 

True. Atmosphere or flavour is sink or swim for a good dungeon. The good Elder Scrolls dungeons post Daggerfall tend to single handendly carry themselves because Dwarven machinery is cool. Also the best Oblivion dungeon, the painted world, while having a good gimmick with you getting paint remover as a weapon poison also lives by being a dungeon in a god damn painting.

 

Often it were not limitations, especially for games from the end of 80s - the start of 90s, but deliberate choice. Partly because it's more simple to make fixed size dungeons (programming speaking, it's just a bunch of arrays), but often it was by design.
Just remember Might and Magic 2, you and the game had an accord. She said: "You can touch every of my 16x16 dungeon squares, but first you must undress me", and boy, how I did undressed her. I searched for doors everywhere, I teleported right inside her secret squares, I tried everything to map each and every of them.
Even where size of the dungeon was hardcoded by engine, sometimes game tried to fuck with you. For example, Hell from Wizardry 5 was level 777 dungeon with a completely insane coordinates.

You forgot to mention that level 3 key behind a secret door that used to avoid some of lich battles. Both key and a "treasure room" on this level were hidden especially good.

 

The M&M series has always done wonders with dungeons between theme, design, gimmicks and whatnots. Can't remember if it's MM3 or Xeen but a classic in there is rooms with no corridors leading to them that you need to teleport to through walls after magic mapping to see where they are. One such dungeon even spells a password with those hidden rooms that you can read by looking at the map. And of course, there's the Xeen dungeon that connects both sides of the world. The MM6 dungeon with the 89476232 save-roll-for-madness floating eyes has already been mentioned of course, but MM6 also did wonders with using the newly found verticality, with some dungeons simply uncompleteable until you could levitate.

 

CTRL + J

 

The dungeons I love the most are the ones I made in Dungeon Keeper 1 and 2.

 

I am software engineer. I can understand all that without you explaining it.

 

Floor 2, Wizardry V. I enjoyed this one.

 

Good traps/puzzles. Not simple, boring stuff like poisoned cloud coming out of a chest, or basic pit trap+spikes. Something like this:

 

I'm sure that is much sexier when playing it.

 

I think everyone did this at least once

 

Labyrinthine dungeons give me headache (especially if there are some puzzles thrown in), so I'd prefer them to be short to medium-sized. If a game boasts having multiple mega-dungeons, that makes me weary without even playing it.