In the Dungeon, No One Can Hear You Scream

Dungeon maps walk a fine line between art and usefulness, especially in published products.  In an effort to make them visually appealing, dungeon maps can lose their usefulness.  Which is odd, because the map is for the DM to guide the PCs, providing the players input about what their PCs see, smell, feel, taste, and hear.  Ideally, the only person to see the map is the DM, so making it pretty rather defeats the purpose.

A portion of the map from Judges Guild's Tegel Manor

Tegel Manor was printed back in 1977.  Aside from its hook - a PC won the deed in a fixed card game against one of the living Rumps, so must clear it to claim it - Tegel Manor has an awesome map.  The segment above is a bit blurry, but you can see words in the hallways.  If you squint just right, you can read some of them: Crying, Quarreling, Rolling, and Creaking.  

The idea being that as PCs walk through those passages, they hear those unexplained sounds.  My question is, why don't more published adventures do this?

If you aren't published, but you still craft your own adventures, why don't you do this?  

Appealing to all the senses is a fiction-writing trick that DMs should make more use of.  Maps are another DM trick that do see regular use, but the maps are often near-useless without the key spread throughout the book.  While you can use the Tegel Manor method of random sounds (and sometimes those are great), a better use of sound in the dungeon (and on the map) is to foreshadow what lies in which direction.

Presume the adventuring party has reached a T-intersection, and are faced with the decision to go left or right.  A steady distant rumbling can be heard to the left, and what might be singing can be heard to the right.  Now the players have an interesting choice to make: rumbling or singing.

Writing these two words on the map itself makes life easier for the DM and more realistic for the players.  Without those two words, the players are likely to be annoyed when they go left and suddenly find themselves in a chamber with a deafening waterfall or when they go right and encounter harpies.  

Some DMs can and will quickly improvise as the PCs move towards the room with the waterfall or the harpies, often with a ham-fisted 'you can hear a noise that gets louder,' after reading the key while the PCs stand in the door way.  Spare yourself and your players the headache, and add foreshadowing words to hallways.  Especially sounds.

This much clearer segment of the map from Melan's excellent Castle Xyntillan uses this method, not only with noises (singing, in this case), but other notes.  Granted, Castle X is an homage to Tegel Manor, but the map is so useful that it is worth copying the technique in its own right.  As an aside, Castle Xyntillan is worth the shipping price from overseas and wait time to receive it.  No where before have I seen a catalogue of PCs and NPCs that died during playtesting and where/how they died; this alone is worth a read.

Another way to make use of sounds in the dungeon is to add them to the wandering monster/random encounter table.  Here is a rough example.  Note that some critters won't make noise, but will have other tells.

d8	monster	sounds
1	gorgon	snorting, clipclopping
2	hobgoblin patrol	steady tramp of boots getting closer
3	giant rattlesnake	a rattling
4	sprites	giggles and laughter
5	ghost	weeping and wailing
6	giant bees (or stirges)	buzzing
7	zombies	moaning
8	roll on the sounds subtable

d6	sounds
1	terrified begging that descends into screaming
2	laughter that turns into weeping
3	echoing voice calling for help
4	roaring
5	dripping
6	crashing

For giggles, items 1-3 on the sounds subtable are in one or more PC voices.  

Combining the two methods works as well: words on the map and a random encounter table that adds sound effects.  

In short, use the empty space on the map and expand your random encounter tables.

It sounds good to me.