So, the current main game in my mix is Okami. I picked it up for the Wii a few weeks ago, though it was out on the Playstation 2 long before that.
It's a great game for a few reasons, and I was hoping it would teach me a bit about art design in games: it is a highly stylistic game that draws on Japanese watercolor paintings and traditional Japanese folklore, and one of the main gimmicks of the game is that you get to draw on the screen with a brush that makes stuff happen. Draw a bomb, you get a bomb! Slash through an enemy, and an invisible sword slices through them!
It is teaching me something about that, but it's also bringing up a topic that is a bit closer to D&D's home: dungeons and magic items. Specifically, how to interlink them, to make them useful to each other and depend on each other. In other words, how to set up a dungeon designed around a reward that actually changes your abilities (rather than just enhancing your abilities).
This isn't exclusive to Okami. Indeed, though Okami does it REALLY WELL, it's actually the hallmark of games going back at least to the 8-bit, battery-backed memory period. I'm sure there are more that do this, but the ones that stand out in my mind are Megaman, Metriod, and, the feather in the cap, the Legend of Zelda.
In Megaman, you get to choose your level, and once you beat it, you get a weapon upgrade that lets you use a special attack (the special attack of the robot you just blew up, of course). Your versatility and suite of powers grows steadily, but also strategically: each boss robot has a weakness against another boss robot's weapon, and each weapon has a slightly different firing pattern, meaning that in some stages certain weapons are more useful than in others
In Metriod, the levels are all interconnected and undivided -- the game flows to make a fairly seamless whole -- but regions have their own themes, as well. In certain areas you're going to need certain weapons, certain upgrades, and certain abilities that you acquire there, and going forward, you can use them to access things out of reach before.
And in Zelda, each "dungeon" has its own new toy from Batman's Utility Belt that you find, and use there extensively, and use against the boss there, and then use going forward to open up new regions of the game.
Of course, in Okami, you have brush techniques, but Okami also manages to dodge the "binary solution" issue that can sometimes crop up in Zelda games or the like: you use the item only in its home dungeon, and then never again.
And in D&D, what do you have? A lot of open-endedness. 3e had random treasure tables, so the DM might not know what he's giving out before he rolls it. 4e has treasure parcels, so the DM definitely knows ahead of time, and the players might, too, but the rewards are generic: items that deal damage, or gold to spend on other items that deal damage.
What Okami, and Zelda, and Metriod, and Megaman can teach us about dungeon design is this: Reverse the process, make the dungeons about the rewards found in them, and make the rewards change the game.
Consider when you get the Hookshot in Zelda, how that opens up the world and gets you to new regions that you couldn't go to before, or when you gain the Freeze Beam in Metriod and can suddenly use your enemies like stepping stones -- not to mention all the new doors you can open up (literally!).
There's nothing that changes the game plan like that in D&D.
Or rather, there is, but it's not part of your rewards. Instead, they're relegated to magic.
There's a lot of magic that historically does this to the game, but there is one famous category: It's those old bugaboos, the travel magic. Flight, teleportation, even spells like knock that just open doors. In 3e, these spells aren't bonuses, they're required for play. In 4e, these spells aren't bonuses, but they're effectively optional, relegated to Rituals. These are problematic for many DMs because they give the party brand new resources and ways to short-cut challenges that the DM may not be expecting (in 3e) or may be superfluous detail that the DM does not want (in 4e).
Certainly, we can do better.
We can apply the "adventure videogame" philosophy to our own dungeon design.
We can reward players with these new capacities in worlds specifically designed to take advantage of them, with dungeons that are themed around these powers, in order to teach them how the powers are to be used.
Here's a few simple ideas that should help you in implementing this in your own game:
Concept 1: These abilities are not entitled to you.
Concept 1: These abilities are not entitled to you. I know, "fly" appears on the Wizard spell list. Tough noogies. In this world, there has been no spellcaster who has ever learned how to fly for some reason. Maybe the gods sealed the power of flight away somewhere in a floating castle. That's not to say you will never get the Fly spell. That is to say that if you want it, you will have to earn it. In this way, 4e fits the paradigm better than 3e, because the ritual mechanics mean that finding a ritual book or a ritual scroll can be a quest, and are usable (theoretically) by the whole party, rather than exclusive to one character. In 3e, flight is kind of assumed. Even if you're a 3e fan, take a look at the 4e ritual list -- consider the 3e versions of these spells as "potential plot treasure." If your player cries about it, be generous with telling them how they can get it, in the world: how they can travel to the floating castle and get the power of flight, if they want. But they can't just learn it as one of their spells per level. You can use the level of the spell/ritual to guide the level of the dungeon, so that when a player defeats the monster holding the power, they also gain the level in which they gain access to that power's ability normally.
Concept 2: These abilities are not entirely optional.
Concept 2: These abilities are not entirely optional. This step comes with a caveat. While it's fine for a videogame to make a given treasure the ONLY WAY to access some part of the game, such "bottlenecking" is frowned on for Table Top games in general. You never want to hang the success of anything on the PC's stumbling across your pet plot hook.
HOWEVER, you DO want to require access to certain abilities in order to achieve certain goals. This makes the ability feel like more than just an item on a checklist. If your group gains Flight from the floating castle, they should be able to do things with it that no one else can do -- access new areas, find more treasures, seek new lands, and otherwise be bold and adventurous, now with sexy new powers.
The key to this little trick is Options. The ritual for flight may be locked away by the gods, but what if there's other ways to fly? Help a mad inventor finish his gyrocopter? Rescue a wind elemental held captive in an underground cave? Travel to the land of the Roc-keepers who defy the gods? Keep it fluid, and let the PC's come up with more than one way to get this. You can also change slight things about that flight: the above options make flight a ritual, a technology, an ally, or a mount, all of which can have different mechanics, uses, and limitations. There's more than one way to skin a cat, or fly, or skin a cat while flying. Oh god.
Once you're sure you have plenty of options, keep flight important by weaving it into the world. Maybe the PC's, having found a way around the ancient edict against flight, can now find out why the gods banned it in the first place (and also access new treasure and dungeons from this old "flying society of sky people" that existed long ago). In a sandbox-style game, this opens up the sandbox to a vast degree. In a more narrative kind of game, this provides new stories and villains and potential characters to engage with. In any type of game, this means new areas, new treasures, new dungeons, new towns, new NPC's to interact with, and even fresh challenges: now that your PC's can fly, you're going to be requiring it of them in future dungeons and encounters.
You may also use foreshadowing effectively, here. If you locked away Flight, introduce things early on in the game that can be easily solved with Flight, that the PC's keep encountering (perhaps an enemy that can fly, or chasms that may only be crossed with flight). Let it frustrate them, for a time, until they can ask NPC's about it, or otherwise learn how to solve that puzzle.
Concept 3: These abilities are multi-purpose.
Concept 3: These abilities are multi-purpose.One of the brilliant things about most of the games mentioned above is that when you get the new ability, it's useful for more than just one thing. The boomerang in Zelda can hit switches, stun enemies, and retrieve items. The spider ball in Metriod lets you fit in gaps, activate switches, roll on walls, and lay bombs. In Okami, when you learn how to paint a mist that slows time, you can use it in combat against most enemies, specifically in combat against certain types of enemies that it is very effective against, and also to get through barriers (by moving past traps and guards and the like).
This is an area where 3e is going to be a slightly stronger fit than 4e. Rituals may need to be augmented, but, in the same vein, 3e spells may need to be reigned in a bit with limitations.
When a party gains Flight, don't over-define it. Don't say "you can only use it to accomplish Specific Goal X." Let them use it in combat to avoid enemies. Let them use it in exploration to circumvent obstacles. Let them use it to gain access to new regions, by flying up to the top of the Mountain of the Gods to ask them why they banned it.
Now that doesn't mean to make it all-powerful. You want to make it something they can use, but not something they want to use all the time. Give it a big drawback, even with the versatility. Say it requires concentration (a move action to concentrate), or that it only works at low altitudes (fly more than 20 feet off the ground, the winds get too strong), or that if you're damaged while flying you can't get airborne again until you have at least a short rest, or that you can only maintain it for a few seconds at a time.
To a certain extent, you should let it dominate, at least at first, when it's a new toy, but keep in mind the limitations of the ability, and make sure the ability has limitations. It's easy to remove limitations later (see the note on upgrades below), but it's more awkward to impose them after the fact, so when in doubt, err on the side of limitations. If you see the ability isn't getting used, make it more useful: find a way to ease the limitations, or introduce more areas where the ability, even with its limitations, accomplishes something the PC's want done
Concept 4: These abilities can be upgraded.
Concept 4: These abilities can be upgraded. Even if the limitations aren't removed, the power can be enhanced. Maybe after gaining the power of Flight, the PCs visit the Palace of the Sun where the Phoenix dwells and modify their power of flight to also deal fire damage when they fly into an enemy. Maybe they fly faster, or farther, or higher, or with less concentration (now it takes up your Free action!).
This mostly comes into play with abilities you introduce early in the game. In order to keep them in play, and to keep them feeling special and significant parts of the world, attention should be lavished on them from your side, making sure that the players have a lot to do with them.
Concept 5: These abilities shouldn't be just for one player.
Concept 5: These abilities shouldn't be just for one player. Pretty bluntly, the ability shouldn't just be useful for the Rogue or the Wizard or the Cleric or the Fighter. It's OK to have a slight advantage in one role or another, especially in a more sandbox-style game (where the wizard who can fly might be a bit more advantaged than the cleric who can fly), but that should also be balanced out with other abilities (the cleric who can, say, use divination will be better than the wizard who can use divination).
More basically, the ability should provide something for every role. Out of combat, this basically means that every character should be able to access it: the fighter can fly to the mountain just as easily as the cleric can, once the party has Flight. In combat, this means that the ability should have both an attack and defense angle: a flying character may be out of melee reach (defense) and might be able to use dive-bombing melee attacks that work like charges (attack).
Concept 6: These abilities should be part of a themed dungeon.
Concept 6: These abilities should be part of a themed dungeon. Once you've wrapped your mind around what these abilities look like in play, you should make a dungeon that uses the features of the ability to the utmost. That includes the non-combat aspects of the ability (the floating castle where Flight is locked away has massive crumbling external staircases that you'll need to fly for a few seconds to get accross), and the combat aspects of the ability (After you find Flight, you must defeat the creature that holds it, a giant wind-blowing bird that tries to ground you on hazardous terrain while you soar above it, trying to ground it!). There should be both normal creatures that the ability is more useful against, and boss creatures which challenge more situational use of the ability (and try to take it away and challenge its limitations).
Not every different method requires a different dungeon. If you know that flight is one of those limited treasures, you can design a "flight dungeon" with challenges and limitations, and then, whatever path the PC's choose toward flight, use the same challenges. If the PC's save the air elemnetal, the crumbling passages and cliffs are underground, and the "bird" is a giant bat that lives in the cave. If the PC's are manufacturing the gyrocopter, perhaps vengeful angels of the gods attack, requiring you to soar from rooftop to unstable rooftop dodging their destructive blows, and at the end, you fight a big one. These are all basically palette swaps of the original "flight dungeon" tests of big cliffs and a flying boss-type monster, re-skinned for different kinds of flight. While you COULD design a different dungeon for each (and, presumably, would create more meaningful options for the PC's in that way), there isn't any reason you have to. Throw in a few unique types of encounters, and you have enough difference to justify a choice.
There ya go! Basically, the first five steps are all about how to treat the ability in the world: a useful, if unusual capacity with limitations that the world assumes you can use to do unique things with, both out of combat and in combat. The sixth step tells you to construct a dungeon around the usefulness and limitations of the ability: effectively, a training ground for using it, complete with enemies (and a boss monster!) that teach players (and their characters) what the ability can and can't do. After the dungeon, they're set loose on a world that has a lot of potential uses for their new ability, things that they couldn't access before (and perhaps things they were frustrated about not being able to access before).
In a sandbox-style game this opens up new areas of exploration, much like crossing the mountain range into the next valley opens up the next valley for exploration (but on a presumably more dramatic scale). In a narrative-style game, this opens up new locations and characters for the ongoing story, and can help resolve problems that the PC's are faced with early on ("how are we going to get the MacGuffin if we can't fly over this gap?").
In any game, this takes abilities that have the capacity to change the way the game is played, and assumes they will be used, without entitling a player to their use. Players must earn the right to ignore challenges, most specifically by facing challenges that teach them exactly what they'll be able to ignore, and what they'll have to still deal with, even with their new powers.
Hopefully, this puts the gears in your head turning. Take a look at some 4e rituals, or some 3e spell categories like teleportation, flight, divination, or even powerful healing like regeneration or raising. Link together some "combat magic" with some "noncombat magic," and keep the package something anyone can gain -- fighter or rogue, too. Stick 'em in a dungeon that makes use of 'em, and enjoy yourself.
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