Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
First time making a "serious" dungeon! How do you do it?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7016454" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Well, you didn't exactly start with an easy concept either.</p><p></p><p>Before I get into what I generally do, the big problem you are going to find with dungeons like you describe is that there is a tension between verisimilitude and playability. A fortress is designed to be wary, to spread an alert, and to summon all the forces in the dungeon to resist attack in a coordinated manner. That's how real fortresses work, and there architecture is constructed around that goal. </p><p></p><p>Modern games generally are not, and even old school games usually wanted a 'kick the door down, kill the foe, and take their stuff' structure. The real challenge I have with fortresses is not designing one where quite soon, the entire fortress rallies to drive back any intruder and the PC's are outnumbered by like 20:1. If you design the fortress in such a way that the PC's don't pull the whole fortress out to resist them in mass, and instead break up the defenses into small bite sized engagements, you've really designed an anti-fortress with architecture that is designed deliberately to make the place hard to defend. And aside from not being intuitive, that's always felt a bit silly to me, and makes me feel really uncomfortable. Maybe some people can just ignore that and get on with it, figuring that the players will be too excited to notice. But I can't not notice.</p><p></p><p>The other problem with fortresses is that they are mostly living space, which is quite frankly rather mundane and uninteresting. The amount of stuff to interact with, relative to the amount of things that are interesting to interact with, is usually quite high. </p><p></p><p>Have you really given any thought to how you want this fortress to play out? Do you anticipate one long running battle? A campaign of raids by the PC's to whittle down the forces of their enemy? Are you going to try to separate the fortress into wards or levels, with inner wards not running to the support of outer wards, and how this gets close enough to versimlitude?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7016454, member: 4937"] Well, you didn't exactly start with an easy concept either. Before I get into what I generally do, the big problem you are going to find with dungeons like you describe is that there is a tension between verisimilitude and playability. A fortress is designed to be wary, to spread an alert, and to summon all the forces in the dungeon to resist attack in a coordinated manner. That's how real fortresses work, and there architecture is constructed around that goal. Modern games generally are not, and even old school games usually wanted a 'kick the door down, kill the foe, and take their stuff' structure. The real challenge I have with fortresses is not designing one where quite soon, the entire fortress rallies to drive back any intruder and the PC's are outnumbered by like 20:1. If you design the fortress in such a way that the PC's don't pull the whole fortress out to resist them in mass, and instead break up the defenses into small bite sized engagements, you've really designed an anti-fortress with architecture that is designed deliberately to make the place hard to defend. And aside from not being intuitive, that's always felt a bit silly to me, and makes me feel really uncomfortable. Maybe some people can just ignore that and get on with it, figuring that the players will be too excited to notice. But I can't not notice. The other problem with fortresses is that they are mostly living space, which is quite frankly rather mundane and uninteresting. The amount of stuff to interact with, relative to the amount of things that are interesting to interact with, is usually quite high. Have you really given any thought to how you want this fortress to play out? Do you anticipate one long running battle? A campaign of raids by the PC's to whittle down the forces of their enemy? Are you going to try to separate the fortress into wards or levels, with inner wards not running to the support of outer wards, and how this gets close enough to versimlitude? [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
First time making a "serious" dungeon! How do you do it?
Top