How do you handle dungeon crawls

Hey Roll20 people. I have been DMing on Roll20 for about a half a year now but I still have a question that I havent answered. How do I do a dungeon crawl without obliterating all my free time? I've done dungeons and such and usually I'll just take a few hours to map out the dungeon and have my players explore it but I'm DMing a game now where I'm planning on a massive multileveled megadungeon and thinking about it theres just no way that I can map out the whole thing. So what do I do? Ive considered just making some generic "encounter maps" for the different rooms and just narrating the exploration, but then I feel that id lost some of the environmental goodness of some of the areas if all the encounter maps are just bland cave floors. Anyone dealt with this? I do have a good amount of free time but not so much that I want to spend it all just on making maps. Thanks.

You can: • Find maps online that are already created for you and just resize them to fit the grid • Pick up  PRO subscription and use some of the API tools to help automate map creation • Find/Use the MarketPlace options for rooms that can be pieced together • Go old-school and just grid it out without detailed graphics

Excellent list of options, Mark G. I'm in the same boat as Evan on this, (making dungeons for upcoming adventures), and I have been using, honestly, all 4 of the approaches that Mark mentioned, each with its pros and cons. For idea #1 look up a site like one called Dave's Mapper to make black-and-white geomorph tile dungeon maps. For Idea #2, Stephen Shomo artist packs in Marketplace and associated API's: <a href="https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/search/?keyw" rel="nofollow">https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/search/?keyw</a>... For Idea #3, here is a direct link to "Dungeon" keyword on Marketplace with lots of options, <a href="https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/search/?keyw" rel="nofollow">https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/search/?keyw</a>... For Idea #4 just set your Roll20 Page to a dark-grey background color, then start to draw walls and rooms with the Drawing Tool. Wiki docs for this, <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Drawing_Tools" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Drawing_Tools</a>

Even that last option would be really time consuming. But Im starting to think that it might be my best bet. I dont think my group really cares about detailed maps so it should be ok.

Evan said: Even that last option would be really time consuming. But Im starting to think that it might be my best bet. I dont think my group really cares about detailed maps so it should be ok. If you use Idea #4, make use of the LINE tool (better than the freehand drawing tool). You could also make use of the Square and Circle shape tools there, particularly if you don't mind a continual line overlapping where a door should be. &nbsp;So, make a large Roll20 page and fill it with lots of squares and circles, then use the Line tool to make hallways connecting. If you wouldn't mind an old-school looking black-and-white mega dungeon, check out Idea #1 because Dave's Mapper can instantly make a dungeon so large that it would take months or years to play, legit megadungeon with a few clicks (and then you export the map from Dave's, and then upload the graphic file into your Roll20 account). PM me asking about my game "Explore Dungeons Inside A Strange World" if you would like an Invite to check out my game that has this kind of mega-dungeon map already set-up and played-upon. The players got about 1/3 of the distance across it, over the course of about 20 game sessions so far.

Evan, I ran across your post and wanted to share a couple of resources that might be useful to you. First things first, I want to give credit where credit is due: I first learned of all of these resources curtesy of Johnn Four's&nbsp; Roleplaying Tips site and newsletter. If you haven't checked out his site you should: it is a massive treasure trove of articles and resources that goes back for years! OK, first up is an article that has a really creative alternative to creating massive maps.&nbsp; Abstract Dungeoneering | The Angry DM &nbsp; Here is the first paragraph of the article: So, Twitter-friend @BrannonHutchins has been having some mapping troubles this week. His PCs are going to be exploring a big old library. But the space seems a bit too big and too empty to be worth going through the minutae of exploring (and mapping) every single room. Meanwhile, my PCs are going to be wandering through some dwarven ruins in which they are trapped. The space is too big and too empty to be worth going through the minutae of exploring (and mapping) every single room. But I still want a sense of the layout because my PCs will be returning to this place and trying to find some things later. More importantly, this is an RPG and if you abstract the exploration too much, you remove the decision points and the sense of control. Decision points are what put the R and the P in the RPG after all. It is a long article with lots of ideas but it is well worth the time to read it! Thinking about his advice and trying to apply it to your&nbsp;dungeon crawl you could have a VERY simple "Overview" map that shows nothing more than the main route through the lower parts of the dungeon. (Maybe they find a semi-completed map on a body near the end of the current level?) There can be A LOT of side corridors that remain unmapped. If the party decides to go off of the main route then you have&nbsp;geomorphs ready and move the party from one to another. That way you are not forced to map the entire thing to begin with, only the main route. OK, that was the main thing I wanted to pass on, but here are a couple of other resources to check out. This is from an article on the RPT site called "The 6 Best Random Dungeon Map Generators". (Alas, the last one is not longer available, so here are the 5 that are available): Dungeon Painter Online&nbsp;By pyromancers Curufea's Random Cave map generator Random Dungeon Generator Dave's Mapper Gozzys&nbsp;Random Map Creators If nothing else check out Gozzy's maps! The interface to create them is great and they churn out fantastic maps! Last but not least, this is just a great idea! I know it came from the RPT newsletter, but I only saved a chunk of the article, so I am not sure who wrote it or what issue it was in. Anyway the idea was that the GM downloaded a bunch of geomorphs, took them to OfficeMax, and ended up with about 100 laminated square tiles.&nbsp;The next time that they played he would wait for the party to reach the end of an existing tile and then deal another one, adding it to the map. Pretty cool for face to face gaming, but the next bit is what really caught my attention! After a&nbsp;copule of sessions he decided to change things up. I'll just quote the part of the article that I saved and let the GM explain: One evening, I decided to open the map up even further and allow player input. They had just defeated a vast array of monsters, and had some serious loot burning a hole in their pockets. So I allowed the players to spend gold to determine how the map tiles went down. When I dealt out a new tile, the players could spend gold to determine how the map was built. To spin the maptile, it cost 10 gold for every 90 degrees the tile was turned. It was 50 gold to replace the tile being dealt with a new randomly drawn maptile. This was an amazing success! The players enjoyed spending their money to get little bonuses like determining the makeup and rotation of the map tiles, and at the end of the game they even pooled their gold together to make a shortcut out of the dungeon. Brilliant! Imagine the fun of putting a tile down on the Roll20 VTT and then allowing the party to spend gold to have you rotate it a different direction, or to replace it with another tile! Anyway, I hope some of this helps with your current mapping&nbsp;dilemma.

Have you tried&nbsp; <a href="http://donjon.bin.sh/d20/dungeon/" rel="nofollow">http://donjon.bin.sh/d20/dungeon/</a> I have used it to make some pretty big maps when pressed for time.

I have a few techniques for creating dungeons on&nbsp; my youtube channel The fastest is probably buying a set of map tiles and&nbsp; building the dungeon in roll20 .

Thanks for the responses, theres a lot of great suggestions and I will make use of the random dungeon generators in the future, but the megadungeon that I am actually running my players through at the moment is the Lost City of Barakus and the problem is that not only is the dungeon HUGE but it is not drawn on a square grid. Its drawn in a curvy and cave like style (I suppose thats more realistic and natural) but it makes a pain to map and far too annoying and time consuming to do dynamic lighting if I were to simply drop the map in roll20 Also I'm not sure of your experiences in roll20 but sometimes it feels as though crawling through the dungeon physically on a map takes a way from the experience a bit, makes it feel "videogamey" I'm considering simply describing the scene to my players and if there is a big battle of some kind going on that is too big for imagination to keep track of I'll have some map I can draw a quick layout of the battlefield on.

Evan, When I do certain actions in my game I just use a generic map. So for wandering around a cave I will use one map of a cave corridor and let the folks know that everything they are wandering around in does not look just like the map, but is close enough to allow them to see or "feel" what their characters would see with the applicable distances, lights, senses, etc, ranged out so if a monster comes along you can just place the monster in the appropriate place, etc. For overland travel I have various generic maps of hills, mountains, forests, meadows, rivers, etc, etc. &nbsp; When the situation is best served by a special map, go for it, create one or find one. But to have something for the routine tramping through any hex/square; using a generic map can save you time and still have the necessary marching order, light radius, etc, that may be needed for whatever system &nbsp;you're using. Let the players imagine their characters moving along, perhaps cautiously listening for things. Etc.

I like that idea a lot Erich and I think I'm gonna use it. There are some areas certainly that I will make a special map for but the game (and my free time) isn't served my mapping out an entire megadungeon for the players to crawl through. Thanks for the idea, I think that it will save me a lot of time but not feel like I'm skimping out on my players.

I use an idea very similar, if not just like Erichs, most of the time. &nbsp;I have an large map of the World my PC's are mugging up, and keep a "You are here" pin with their current location. I'll then scale things down with a smaller map if its needed, to show, say a keeps layout, that doesn't always show monsters, etc on it. If they run into trouble, I'll have a "final fantasy" encounter on a generic map, that has a few options for me.&nbsp; I do run many dungeon crawls as well, and typically make them with a random dungeon editor.&nbsp; <a href="http://donjon.bin.sh/d20/dungeon/" rel="nofollow">http://donjon.bin.sh/d20/dungeon/</a> &lt;= that one

There are a lot of different dungeon packs on the marketplace that contain both pre-made swaths of dungeon, and the tiles to edit those swaths, add more, or build your own. Mine is just one of them , but if you needed a huge and varied dungeon very quickly, they can all be chained together to create a seamless monster dungeon. There are also a ton of other great artist that do similar things in various styles.

Personally when I have tons and tons of rooms that I have to manage I would simply create a roll chart with say a 100 different type of encounters. You can have everything from they find a empty chest to a nest of undead or zombies or what ever. Find a sword on the ground, or rotten room, poison gas, the options are endless. Make a few key rooms that you want a certain encounter for and than randomize the rest, keeps things moving and entertaining. If your dungeon has much more than 100 rooms, I would consider shrinking your dungeon, personally (Thats a lot of dungeon crawl) But eitherway, to keep things changing you may have to create more than one list, or expand your list and roll a higher set of numbers. Roll20 is great for the insanely high roll numbers you could use. d1000 yay.