Much ink has been spilled on the topic of wheelchair-accessible dungeons (ramps with maximum slope 8.3 percent). But the rest of the building code should not be neglected. Is your auditorium large enough to accommodate your minions as they cheer for your latest speech (pic related)? Are your corridors wide enough to accommodate your fleeing minions after your trigger the self-destruct device (1 foot for every 60 people in the dungeon)? Are your stairways gentle enough for elderly translators and thaumaturgists to climb (maximum 77.5 percent--7.75-inch risers and 10-inch treads)? Seriously, these codes can help you design buildings in your campaign.Hard mode: Discuss the building code of a non-US country. (I hear Britain and Spain allow stairways to be as steep as 90 percent.)Dante Must Die mode: Discuss the building code of a country (or an insurance company, or a guild) in your setting, including how it accommodates races that are larger or smaller than humans. (For example, stairs built for halflings might have the same maximum slope, but a smaller maximum riser height--5.25 inches rather than 7.75 inches.)
Whoops, forgot links.https://codes.iccsafe.org/content/IBC2024V2.0 (US non-house building code; ramps, auditoriums, corridors, and stairways are covered in chapter 10, Means of Egress)https://codes.iccsafe.org/content/IRC2024V2.0 (US house code)https://codes.iccsafe.org/content/IZC2024V2.1 (example US zoning code, not really used by anyone but still a reasonable model for designing a neighborhood in a higher-tech campaign)
Dungeons, by and large aren't bultfrom scratch. What typically happens is some dark lord type takes over a crypt, a fort or an ancient ruin, refubishing it as a base of operations. All of this is to say, very few dungeons will be up to code. Almost none.
>>97708989But that crypt or fort or ruin will still have been built to some kind of standard. Even if nothing has been codified, the local craftsmen will still have their rules of thumb--"never build a corridor narrower than 36 inches", "your customer will complain if the treads are shorter than 10 inches", et cetera.
>>97708989A lot of that can get grandfathered in if you have a few gnome connections.
>>97709007Yeah, but it'd be a standard from decades to centuries, even millenia ago. Possibly with a culture with entirely different ideas lf what constitutes "safety," because nobody knew that lead was poisonous and the fantasy eauivalent of asbestos gives you cancer. And, even if it was safe at one point, the endless march of time would wear down stone, rot wood and cover the place with mold.And all of that is assuming it was originally a Human or otherwise Medium creature sized domicile and not one made for the Small or Large races. This would all become serious issues within a cosmopolitan city where many races of many sizes live, but that's beyond the scope of this thread so let's keep it to Dungeons.
>>97709007>But that crypt or fort or ruin will still have been built to some kind of standardPeople who dig tunnels underneath other buildings often do so in clandestine manners.Sometimes adventure sites are adventure sites because the local lord or one of his underlings wants to reuse some old abandoned construction for new purposes, but his surveyors find that it's occupied by hostiles. And then the adventurers hired to clean out the (likely non-human) squatters find that there's passages underneath it that are not on record.
>>97709007Have you been to many medieval or older structures? They have almost universally terrible ergonomics. Stair steps are narrow and uneven, doors are low, corridors are narrow etc. Castles are the worst, palaces are unsurprisingly more comfortable.If something vaguely resembling a modern building code existed (f.ex as guild regulations) then it obviously did not cover ergonomics to modern expectations. That's not to say that there weren't rules or standards of craftsmanship, but more for sound construction than for comfort. So even if the dungeon was at one point constructed as a fortress for example, expect stairs to be pretty bad by modern standards.That doesn't mean you can't have that sort of thing in your dragon game with flying wheelchairs, do whatever works in your fantasy.
>>97709007Not like that, no.https://imgur.com/gallery/let-s-hike-stairs-harihar-fort-india-b3YBFl4
