Whenever I’m running a game or playing a PC there’s one thing I hate in fantasy RPGs more than anything else. Hallways.

I have never once played an RPG adventure and had the experience improved with a hallway. They offer nothing a shut door couldn’t but introduce a major problems.

They are boring!

When you walk down a hall either nothing happens as you walk down it or a trap activates/monsters attacks.

If a trap is activated fantastic, excellent, love it. But we can’t put traps in every hallway.

If a monster attacks then its a pretty boring piece of terrain. Only one melee character can attack it, there’s probably a corner so the wizard at the back can’t even do anything, and the ranger has -10 to their attacks because of all the people in the way. Its fun once when a gelatinous cube attacks but after that it just turns frustrating.

There is only one time a hallway is useful and that’s when you want to break up rooms in a dungeon that doesn’t have doors. Thus keeping the mystery of each room behind an obstacle.

Here’s a classic dungeon map with hallways. As is clear, while it creates a labyrinthine design for the person running the game, players will just be annoyed by all the useless halls.

So what can we do?

My suggestion, we need to stop designing hallways as connectors and start designing them like full blown rooms. If your hallway doesn’t have enough interesting interactions in it to be in the list of locations, just cut it. The last thing you want is for a someone running your game to say “It’s another hallway.”

Is there a trap in there? Move it to a room.
Is there a monster in there? Move it to a room.
Are there several doors that branch out from it? MOVE IT TO A ROOM.

A hallway lowers tension while a room raises it.

Here is the same style of map with my suggestions put in place. There are only three halls each with clear purpose. One is the entrance, one is trapped, and one is a secret passage.