After a recent session left a slight sour taste in my mouth, I felt I needed to change how I run a few things when it comes to "dungeons". I recently ran my players through a palette-swapped Cassalanter Villa, where I recreated the entire villa in DungeonDraft for my players to explore. I transcribed the journal notes from the adventure into my map and whenever someone entered a room I told them what was there, standard issue.
The problem that arose was that since players could move about on their own since this is a virtual environment, many players lost focus and basically speed-ran the entire map. But the main issue was that several players felt that the realism of having a fully decked out "dungeon" like this led to alot of "you search the room and find nothing".
So I decided to switch up my dungeon design for an upcoming session. I designed the entire dungeon as a mindmap, or a chart. Basically I've removed all non-enjoyable rooms and corridors from the dungeon, and only placed the actual rooms that have something interesting in them.
If we take the Cassalanter Villa as an example, I might recreate the first floor into three "rooms": the villa, the carriage house, and the garden, and place connections between them, so that the Villa connects to the Garden, which connects to the Carriage House. That way, if they are in the Garden, they can choose to go to the Villa, or go to the Carriage House.
I was wondering if anyone else has done something similar? My inspiration was old Text-based RPGs (You enter the Barracks, skeletons are strewn across the floor. There is a door to the south with a draft coming from beneath it. There is a archway leading north, a pungent smell comes from it), and the focus would lay on giving hints what they might find if they venture a certain direction, like they find old books on the floor in the passage leading north, indicating a library perhaps.
I've experimented with this as well as using mind maps overall in creating areas of story/ideas in a campaign.
I think the balance you are trying to get is between being overdescriptive (in this case showing everything to the players and then they see a lot of emptiness -- and that is unsatisfying) vs describing only important things -- in which case, the players will know everything you describe is important. A mindmap as a tool I don't think will help in this case, as I think the root cause is the description balance.
That being said :) You could lay it out as a mind map and have concepts for what is interesting. So instead of describing the hallway that is 10' wide and 40' long in panelled wood, the party just goes from one room to the other room connected to by the hallway. If some of the hallways are important, then they become their own concepts and worthy of description.
I don't really use MMs for dungeon design (once in a dungeon). I've used them a lot more for towns and who knows what, and what rumours may be available and where they may lead.
Hope that helps some .
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"An' things ha' come to a pretty pass, ye ken, if people are going to leave stuff like that aroound where innocent people could accidentally smash the door doon and lever the bars aside and take the big chain off'f the cupboard and pick the lock and drink it!"
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Hi everybody!
After a recent session left a slight sour taste in my mouth, I felt I needed to change how I run a few things when it comes to "dungeons". I recently ran my players through a palette-swapped Cassalanter Villa, where I recreated the entire villa in DungeonDraft for my players to explore. I transcribed the journal notes from the adventure into my map and whenever someone entered a room I told them what was there, standard issue.
The problem that arose was that since players could move about on their own since this is a virtual environment, many players lost focus and basically speed-ran the entire map. But the main issue was that several players felt that the realism of having a fully decked out "dungeon" like this led to alot of "you search the room and find nothing".
So I decided to switch up my dungeon design for an upcoming session. I designed the entire dungeon as a mindmap, or a chart. Basically I've removed all non-enjoyable rooms and corridors from the dungeon, and only placed the actual rooms that have something interesting in them.
If we take the Cassalanter Villa as an example, I might recreate the first floor into three "rooms": the villa, the carriage house, and the garden, and place connections between them, so that the Villa connects to the Garden, which connects to the Carriage House. That way, if they are in the Garden, they can choose to go to the Villa, or go to the Carriage House.
I was wondering if anyone else has done something similar? My inspiration was old Text-based RPGs (You enter the Barracks, skeletons are strewn across the floor. There is a door to the south with a draft coming from beneath it. There is a archway leading north, a pungent smell comes from it), and the focus would lay on giving hints what they might find if they venture a certain direction, like they find old books on the floor in the passage leading north, indicating a library perhaps.
I've experimented with this as well as using mind maps overall in creating areas of story/ideas in a campaign.
I think the balance you are trying to get is between being overdescriptive (in this case showing everything to the players and then they see a lot of emptiness -- and that is unsatisfying) vs describing only important things -- in which case, the players will know everything you describe is important. A mindmap as a tool I don't think will help in this case, as I think the root cause is the description balance.
That being said :) You could lay it out as a mind map and have concepts for what is interesting. So instead of describing the hallway that is 10' wide and 40' long in panelled wood, the party just goes from one room to the other room connected to by the hallway. If some of the hallways are important, then they become their own concepts and worthy of description.
I don't really use MMs for dungeon design (once in a dungeon). I've used them a lot more for towns and who knows what, and what rumours may be available and where they may lead.
Hope that helps some .
"An' things ha' come to a pretty pass, ye ken, if people are going to leave stuff like that aroound where innocent people could accidentally smash the door doon and lever the bars aside and take the big chain off'f the cupboard and pick the lock and drink it!"