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Post by kenmeister on Aug 19, 2015 13:29:29 GMT -6
OD&D White Box has 6 dungeon level wandering monster charts.
Palace of the Vampire Queen (hope I'm not giving anything away here) has 5 levels.
The Monster & Treasure Assortment has 9 levels.
I just saw someone refer to the "classic 10 level dungeon".
So what is the "default" number of levels supposed to be?
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Post by smubee on Aug 19, 2015 13:40:13 GMT -6
in OD&D it's written that an interesting dungeon will have at least 6 levels.. So that's what I usually do!
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Post by scottenkainen on Aug 19, 2015 15:43:21 GMT -6
I once only twice have used four-level dungeons, and had mixed results; one time I thought it was too much and went on too long. Two- to three-level dungeons usually hit my sweet spot.
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Post by scottyg on Aug 19, 2015 16:18:39 GMT -6
I would say there should be enough levels to get the players to where you can build a castle and tackle the outdoors.
The original Greyhawk had 13. Blackmoor had at least 10. Those are my campaign dungeon inspirations.
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Post by geoffrey on Aug 19, 2015 20:34:42 GMT -6
"A good dungeon will have no less than a dozen levels down, with offshoot levels in addition, and new levels under construction..." (The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, p. 4)
"Greyhawk castle, for example, has over a dozen level in succession downwards, more than that number branching from these, and not less than two new levels under construction at any given time." (The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, p. 4)
The dungeons under Castle Greyhawk, then, totaled at least 27 levels!
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Post by scalydemon on Aug 19, 2015 21:37:56 GMT -6
"A good dungeon will have no less than a dozen levels down, with offshoot levels in addition, and new levels under construction..." (The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, p. 4) "Greyhawk castle, for example, has over a dozen level in succession downwards, more than that number branching from these, and not less than two new levels under construction at any given time." (The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, p. 4) The dungeons under Castle Greyhawk, then, totaled at least 27 levels! Cool quotes! I want to go down there with a sword & torch |
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Aug 20, 2015 0:07:56 GMT -6
Whatever your imagination dictates.
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Post by Finarvyn on Aug 20, 2015 4:23:51 GMT -6
I think that a lot of this comes down to the intent of the dungeon. Many old school modules limited themselves to 1-2 levels as they weren't intended for long-term play. Judges Guild published some generic 3-4 level sample dungeons back in the day that got heavy play from our group. Men & Magic suggested the six-level dungeon but then provided charts for monsters much deeper. The old Dungeon! board game used nine levels of dungeon. Lots of variation here.
At one point I had created a dungeon of around 20 levels, inspired by the Greyhawk and Blackmoor mega-dungeons of Gary and Dave. I found that the first levels were pretty elaborate and well-planned but then I got bored and the deeper ones were sloppy and not as interesting. (I was trying to make a deep dungeon just so I could say that my dungeon had XX levels to it. I should have stopped earlier or only developed deeper levels as needed rather than all at once. Players hardly ever got that deep, anyway.)
Some more modern dungeons (like 2E's Underdark) were only a couple of levels deep but many levels worth wide. They had as many rooms as a deeper dungeon, only flatter.
ONe dungeon I'd love to run is Emerald Spire for Pathfinder. Sixteen different designers, each designing one level of a dungeon. Eight (double sided)battle maps to allow for miniatures play on each of the sixteen levels. ZI bought the thing but haven't attempted to convert it into something non-Pathfinder yet.
Clearly there is no "official" size and not really even a preferred size to a dungeon, so it has to come down to purpose and degree of inspiration.
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Post by coffee on Aug 20, 2015 7:32:50 GMT -6
OD&D White Box has 6 dungeon level wandering monster charts. I refer you to the table on p. 10 of U&WA, where you'll see which of those level tables to use depending on which dungeon level you're on, from 1 to 13+. (In this context, Monster Level and Dungeon Level are two different things.) So, by the book, dungeons can go 13 or more levels deep. |
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Post by capvideo on Aug 20, 2015 10:09:50 GMT -6
Six levels is a lot for me, but then I also tend to sprawl them, too. I think the biggest dungeon I’ve created was four levels, maybe five depending on how you count them.
Even Caverns of Thracia, my favorite “big” dungeon not of my own making, only has four levels (five if you count 3A, which is a bit big to be a sublevel).
Which is not to say I don’t want to run Stonehell Dungeon and Castle of the Mad Archmage! But the thing about dungeons once you hit six levels or more is that they are pretty much the campaign right there. Which is kind of what the original big dungeons were, if I understand them correctly. People stayed in the dungeons of Greyhawk for a long time.
If I were to create a dungeon with six or more levels, I expect I would not make all the levels at once: I'd probably start with the first three or four, and once they hit the third level, start thinking about the fifth and maybe the sixth; and so on, building it down as the players went deeper. That way I could customize the levels to be the kind of things the group finds most fun. I think Dungeonland and The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror came about this way.
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Post by DungeonDevil on Aug 20, 2015 11:43:47 GMT -6
At extreme depths the lack of oxygen and the high temperatures would make low-level exploration impossible. Oh wait. This is fantasy.  In Old School, I'd say 6, since it appeared to be more strongly 1d6-based than later iterations, FWICT. You can make it 8 -- to correspond to the number of original character levels 1 (flunky/normal man)...4 (Hero)...8 (Superhero). That way you can say that, at 4th level, only Heroes and higher can survive it, and at lvl 8, pretty much only Superheroes have the experience and doughtiness to endure, etc. |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 20, 2015 12:15:15 GMT -6
The number of levels a dungeon should have is N+1 where N is the deepest level the players have explored.
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Post by kenmeister on Aug 20, 2015 12:56:21 GMT -6
The old Dungeon! board game used nine levels of dungeon. All copies of Dungeon I've seen went to 6, and I've seen 3 different versions. I had a chance to buy the original bookshelf version, but passed on it. Maybe I shouldn't have! Even Caverns of Thracia, my favorite “big” dungeon not of my own making, only has four levels (five if you count 3A, which is a bit big to be a sublevel). Yeah Caverns has, going down vertically: Level 1 Level 2 Level 2A, all the secret areas under level 2 combined certainly form a whole other level Level 3A, the final resting place of the King Level 3, the palace and gardens Level 4, under the palace So that's 6. My players have explored some of 1 and 2 and delved into 2A, and I hope they come back someday but I'm pessimistic  |
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Post by jcstephens on Aug 22, 2015 9:43:55 GMT -6
So what's the deepest level anyone's actually made it to, or had their players do so?
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Post by scottyg on Aug 22, 2015 19:41:39 GMT -6
I've had one player make it to the 13th level. Several to the 7th. Most don't make it past the 4th.
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Post by Stormcrow on Aug 22, 2015 19:52:30 GMT -6
The old Dungeon! board game used nine levels of dungeon. All copies of Dungeon I've seen went to 6, and I've seen 3 different versions. has six levels, but Finarvyn's nine comes from their arrangement. The 3rd, 4th, and 5th levels are each split in two on opposite sides of the board. |
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Post by scottenkainen on Aug 24, 2015 8:28:17 GMT -6
Ah, I'd been wondering what Fin meant by that!
If we're talking sprawling mega-dungeon levels only, then four. If we can count levels of finite size or partial levels, then five.
And then the Underdark complicates things, as it's certainly sprawling, but not broken into obvious levels...
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Post by Finarvyn on Aug 24, 2015 14:23:50 GMT -6
All copies of Dungeon I've seen went to 6, and I've seen 3 different versions. has six levels, but Finarvyn's nine comes from their arrangement. The 3rd, 4th, and 5th levels are each split in two on opposite sides of the board. You are correct, and that's what I get for relying on my memory. Haven't played in a while. |
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Post by howandwhy99 on Aug 25, 2015 20:58:30 GMT -6
I think the classic amount has been answered. I'd guess it has something to do with the number of class levels there are. OD&D had 9+ up to 13 thereabouts. AD&D went up to odd numbers for each class, but perhaps 20-30 levels overall ...which is a lot of dungeon.
I'd guess plenty of sublevels and such are not being counted in those numbers though.
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