Randomly dungeons starting bothering me when I was about 12. I was really concerned about where the bugbears defecated and what the umber hulk lived on if the dungeon traps hadn't been disturbed for 200 years, and how the fuck would that work anyway.
I ran city games wildernesses and castles.

Now I have deliberated made a point of visiting most major 'sites in the world, from the Paris catecomes, to castle bran, from palenque to Ankor wat, from the London war rooms to the great pyramid. I still don't do many dungeons but when I do they make sense.
Animal warrens are a great match for goblin or kolbold layers. A temple can be symetrical and interesting (if you ever get a chance to play tag with your daughter in knonossos take it as its awesome fun) underground cities will often follow geological features which appear pretty random. Tomb builders will build false sections to protect the graves, trapping these is not so far fetched...
An internally logical design actually aids play as the players engage more with a logical space they grokk it easier.
If you have magic as part of the setting you can use it to make dungeons fantastical without loosing reason.

This results in some interesting things. Goblin warrens are only 5 feet high if the goblins dug them,that will affect armour and combat and preclude some weapons. Wizards that can use mage hands at will might well protect their treasure with mechanisms that have to be operated remotely, etc...

on the matter of dragons fitting through the door remember that many dragons can take human form (of course those are mostly good dragons so your unlikely to be fighting them)

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;802286I'm personally done with investing time in realism that most players never notice. "We just want to play dammit, enough with the prepping!"

Crom's hairy nutsack, yes.

YMMV and all appropriate disclaimers.

When I started back into OD&D a few years back, I discovered it was a lot more fun if I simply accepted it for what it was... a goofy fun game inspired by some history, some fairy tale, and some pulp stories from the 30s to the 60s.

In other words, I don't worry about it.  In fact, I ANTI worry about it.  I put some soft earth in the middle of a stone wall, and told my players that I actively don't care if it works that way in real life.

Just like when I put an adventure in an old copper mine, I actively avoided researching medieval mining techniques.  I.  Do.  Not.  Care.

Fortunately, my players are OK with this.  I wouldn't play with people who aren't.

Remember, when Phil Barker (Prof MAR Barker) razzed me about "what do all those monsters eat," I put a McDonald's on the sixth level of the dungeon.

"What do they eat?  They eat "FUCK YOU," Phil, that's what they eat."

I just don't worry about "realism" in dungeons.  People who do might be happier playing another game.

I've long been more in favor of realistic dungeons. But in recent years I have given in to the fun of letting go and just letting my imagination run wild. I think there is something to be said for the implausible dungeon. It does free you up quite a bit. Still I do tend to balance that with some effort at realism and purpose.

Quote from: Old Geezer;802298Just like when I put an adventure in an old copper mine, I actively avoided researching medieval mining techniques.  I.  Do.  Not.  Care.

mostly i agree with you but i think the copper mine would auctualy be better with research

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;802286I'm personally done with investing time in realism that most players never notice. "We just want to play dammit, enough with the prepping!"

I like realism, but one thing I have come to realize is a huge benefit of fantasy settings is that they can free up your imagination. Part of my initial attraction to fantasy was that it defied normal explanation. I remember reading somewhere that the whole reason Howard made his Hyborian Age was so he didn't have to waste time researching, he could just make stuff up. I read history all the time, I spent years writing history papers. Now when I game, I am becoming much more inclined to separate that from my fantasy world building. I turn it off and just let myself have fun, get creative. Some of what I have absorbed from reading is bound to find its way in there, but I don't worry about whether every last detail matches up with historical realities any more.

Quote from: tuypo1;802302mostly i agree with you but i think the copper mine would auctualy be better with research

Sure, but it's a YMMV thing.

I tried the 'heavy research' thing years ago, complete with money in pounds, shillings, and pence, not to mention groats, farthings, crowns, and guineas.  Historical weights and prices for everything... I spent several years researching prices.  Et cetera.  Real city maps.  The whole nine yards.

My players didn't give a shit.  Except that they wanted to go back to "10 copper equals one silver, 10 silver equals one gold."

I save my historical research jones for my model railroading.

Also, lad, as a personal favor could I ask you to please use some capitalization and punctuation?  Your posts are hard for these old eyes to read.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;802303I like realism, but one thing I have come to realize is a huge benefit of fantasy settings is that they can free up your imagination. Part of my initial attraction to fantasy was that it defied normal explanation. I remember reading somewhere that the whole reason Howard made his Hyborian Age was so he didn't have to waste time researching, he could just make stuff up. I read history all the time, I spent years writing history papers. Now when I game, I am becoming much more inclined to separate that from my fantasy world building. I turn it off and just let myself have fun, get creative. Some of what I have absorbed from reading is bound to find its way in there, but I don't worry about whether every last detail matches up with historical realities any more.

This.  This with knobs on.

I like realism sometimes, or realism as a launching point (since I think your imagination can really get supercharged from things like, say, the Cappadochian underground city or whatnot), or at least some vague handwavy logic.

I mean, in D&D, considering at mid to high levels you could have a cubic habitat on the moon and teleport there for vacations, weird dungeons seem less hard to believe.

Quote from: tuypo1;802302mostly i agree with you but i think the copper mine would auctualy be better with research

If the group specifically asks for one or more educational adventures, it could be entertaining. But in general, you don't need much research. A quick survey of the topic, yes, certainly, just to get some ideas of the possibilities.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;802303I like realism, but one thing I have come to realize is a huge benefit of fantasy settings is that they can free up your imagination. Part of my initial attraction to fantasy was that it defied normal explanation. I remember reading somewhere that the whole reason Howard made his Hyborian Age was so he didn't have to waste time researching, he could just make stuff up. I read history all the time, I spent years writing history papers. Now when I game, I am becoming much more inclined to separate that from my fantasy world building. I turn it off and just let myself have fun, get creative. Some of what I have absorbed from reading is bound to find its way in there, but I don't worry about whether every last detail matches up with historical realities any more.

I'm a big believer in letting historical and real-world sources be an inspiration for a fantasy world. Sometimes, I may let it box me in too much, ruling out ome things because "that's not medieval". But I try not to let reality become a strait jacket.

In fact, I like a very sketchy approach to the world in general, letting it grow organically. Barely any solid details of the world's history, politics, economics, ecology. Just fill in the details during play, and let those discovered facts determine what happens next, or what the players could do?

On realism in any gaming, go the Traveller way.

Use just enough realism so that it does not destroy the suspension of disbelief created in order to play. Otherwise, be imaginative.

Not sure I have much to add to this but I will second or third the notion that I used to make my dungeons with designated areas for kobolds to use as a shitter, cook adventures, and dream of the love dragons; every ecological need of the dungeons' denizens needed to be attended to.

And the players did not care; they were to busy tapping on every single wall looking for the secret door that lead to that 50 copper piece stash they knew those kobolds hid somewhere.

Since getting more into some of the new OSR modules I have come to love dungeons made of giant sea snails and downed flying saucers.

And once more I think I have learned that they actually make more sense in the context of these games than something that speaks to the ecology of creatures where it's not entirely positive how they actually use the shitter in the first place.

Just put a little bit of thought into the dungeon's origin, history and ecology and you're gold. This was all satisfactorily addressed to neophyte me with the Method to Your Madness article published in Dragon number 10 and then reprinted in Best of the Dragon volume 1.

IMG today I only run short dungeons, so the ecological factors are fairly straightforward. But as I have gotten older, I have come to reappreciate the magic funhouse/monster zoo/maze of the mad archmage setups ... putting one of those on the table after a steady diet of "realistic" digs turns out to be a lot of great fun.

So yeah, you can have it both ways.

Quote from: RPGPundit;802219Anyone actually want to try to defend the dungeon with some argument other than "fuck you, it's fun and I don't need to think about it"?

1.  Species that simply prefer living underground (either because they fear the sun like the drow or because they love the dark like the dwarves).

2. Magical construction techniques that make huge, underground constructions more plausible.

3. Magical creatures that either have an instinctual need to create underground complexes or which create them as an unintentional byproduct. (Where did all these twisting tunnels come from? Well, they started as purple worm trails. Then the goblins moved in.)

4. Catastrophes on the surface world that prompt people to flee underground are also a great explanation for underground complexes. (See Earthdawn. Or just an Age of Dragons.) Mix-and-match with the techniques above to explain how the huge cataclysm refuges were built. Then simply remove the danger and/or (better yet) introduce some new danger that came up from below and drove all the vault dwellers back onto the surface.

It's also useful to establish a method for underground species to generate food. In my campaign world there's fey moss, which serves as the basis for fungal gardens. Huge, artificial suns left behind in underdark chasms by the vault builders or the under-dwarves also work.

I don't find it valuable to do full-scale urban planning or figure out exactly how many toilets the goblins need, but I do find that at least some degree verisimilitude makes for better games: If the goblins get their food from fungal gardens, then their food supply can be jeopardized by destroying those gardens. And that's either the basis for an interesting scenario hook or it's a strategic master-stroke from the players or it's some other surprise that I hadn't even thought of before the campaign started.