4E Dungeon Design experiences

[MerricB]

At the beginning of this year, I'd planned to wrap up my Sunday afternoon (Ulek) campaign and start up new a 4e campaign for that group with Keep on the Shadowfell. I'd also planned to continue running the Friday Nighters through Savage Tide until we finished it (most likely at the end of 2008 or in early 2009) and then start playing 4e.

The latter part of that plan did not eventuate. My Friday Nighters told me, in no uncertain terms, that they weren't really enjoying Savage Tide and wanted to convert to 4e as soon as possible. Well, what is someone who is interested in 4e himself to do? Start up a new 4e campaign, of course!

However, my Friday Night group has traditionally been my "published adventures" group whilst the Sunday Afternooners are a homebrew group - I don't have the time to spend preparing two homebrew groups. And I didn't have any published adventures for them; a couple of the players are also in my Sunday group, so running KotS for both was out. So, my only option was to design adventures for them myself. My homebrew campaign had swapped days. Eek!

As an aside, I'm going to find a homebrew on Friday night to be much tougher to run than one on Sunday. Sunday games allow me Saturday to prepare and have everything fresh in my mind. Friday night needs to be prepared earlier, for often I'm exhausted on Thursday night when otherwise I'd be preparing. We'll see how it goes.

In any case, those who know me will not be surprised that I'm setting the action in the City of Greyhawk. Although this isn't exactly the "Point of Light" setting of 4e, when you come down to it, 4e doesn't really need a PoL setting to work. This also has the advantage of being a place I've run many adventures in before, so I'll have access to NPCs that I've previously established, and we might even be able to run into some of the old PCs from the Age of Worms campaign. I find that sort of thing cool.

To allow the players to get used to the new system, the first session will involve a basic dungeon crawl. Now, I have a perfectly good dungeon already designed - my version of Castle Greyhawk (which isn't any official version from TSR, Wizards or Troll Lords). So, all I have to do is update the monsters to 4e and I'll be good to go. Right?

Well, not quite.

There are a couple of problems.

First, my notes for this dungeon are based primarily on 3e design work (although I designed some areas during 2e), and 3e has one great flaw when it comes to encounter design: it assumes the PCs will be facing only one or two monsters.

Yes, there are exceptions, but for the most part, 3e didn't assume you'd be facing 10+ monsters. One of the great joys of 4e for me is the introduction of minions. I can have 10+ monsters in an encounter and they'll be pretty much as easy to run as those goblins in the Keep on the Borderlands were all those years ago.

So, some of the encounters need a few more monsters added. That's not so hard... except that the rooms on the map aren't quite big enough. When you have to contend with miniatures rather than just descriptions, you suddenly need a lot more room. (No 30 orcs in a 10'x10' room!)

However, I noticed something about the map I'd drawn for this level: the rooms were in clusters, often with a central room with a few side rooms around it. Hmm. If I made sure the encounter included *all* of the rooms, and perhaps removed a few walls here and there or added a door or archway... the map wouldn't need much surgery to work as a 4e dungeon. Cool!

I was rather amused to see that after I'd consolidated encounters, what had been a dungeon key with about 45 separate room descriptions (many empty) was now 11 encounter areas. That's a very 4e trait, although in some ways it gets back to AD&D and the idea of the reactive encounter.

I think I need to add a few more rooms and encounters, lest the PCs bre required to clear out the entire level to reach level 2.

The second issue that has turned up in one of treasure placement. This is less an issue with adapting the dungeon and more one of just my unfamiliarity with the system. You see, I'm not familiar enough with the magic items to be really sure of what I'm giving the players.

This is something that will fade with more experience. However, it's not like there's a master list of all of the items by Treasure Level. (I rather hope that such exists in the Tome of Treasure, a book I'm really looking forward to).

The deterministic method of treasure allocation also feels very odd to me, someone who learnt D&D from AD&D and Moldvay Basic. I like my dice! To have set treasure portions that you dole out amongst the encounters? Very weird. I think it'll will work well in play from the viewpoint of the PCs, but it feels too controlled for me, the dice-loving DM.

An issue I'll have to come to grips with is also what's on the second level of the dungeon. Should it be primarily level 2 encounters? Or should it get difficult more quickly than that? Should level 1 of the dungeon before the first two levels of PC experience, and then level 2 be for levels 3 & 4 PCs? Something to decide after I see the first session.

I also have to include traps, skill challenges and some role-playing, just so everyone can show off their strong points.

I've got less than a week now, before I run my first homebrew session of 4e. Wish me luck!

Cheers!

 

[Renshai]

Sounds like a excellent start to a campaign, and to 4E Merric. Keep us informed on how it goes.

 

[Wisdom Penalty]

Went through a nearly identical process wherein I, too, had a dungeon planned for my group that was designed under the auspices of 3e.

Merric, do you remember that nifty leading WotC article during the lead-up to the launch? I forget who wrote it, and I can't locate the link, but it basically was a guy explaining how he took a "normal" dungeon and plugged into the 4e design philosophy. Basically he craved a rift down the middle and then circle areas of rooms instead of numbering individual rooms themselves.

Anyway, it was a novel idea that should have occurred to me years ago but never did. I've used that premise the create some dungeons that we've playtested and have had an absolute blast. There is no longer a "front rank" as critters can (and should) move through corridors and archways to assail the party from different directions. Makes for a very dynamic and fun encounter.

Best of luck!
Wis

 

[Spatula]

First, my notes for this dungeon are based primarily on 3e design work (although I designed some areas during 2e), and 3e has one great flaw when it comes to encounter design: it assumes the PCs will be facing only one or two monsters.

Riiight, which is why there's rules for determining the EL of groups of many monsters...

Anyway, interesting read. I agree with you about the treasure thing - I miss my random treasure tables. But the parcel system doesn't really allow for it - since a group of 5 PCs is only supposed to get 4 items per level, and there's 3 "neccessary" items for each PC, each item found as treasure pretty much has to be something the PCs can make use of. At least if you're going by the RAW.

I've been sorta semi-working on converting L1 The Secret of Bone Hill over to 4e as an exercise, and it's definitely a bit of challenge to still use the old maps and monsters. Most dungeon rooms have just 1 monster in them, and while you can always add more, it doesn't always make sense. Some monsters are just solitary creatures, but they aren't solo monsters in 4e - oozes are a good example. You can upgrade it to a solo, but I don't really feel the DMG gives us enough info to do this and balance it properly. Or contrive some way to add in other combatants (KotS does that). Adding in traps is another good option. On the flip side there are other areas that work really well, where tripping one encounter causes monsters from other areas to join the fight.

Merric, do you remember that nifty leading WotC article during the lead-up to the launch? I forget who wrote it, and I can't locate the link, but it basically was a guy explaining how he took a "normal" dungeon and plugged into the 4e design philosophy. Basically he craved a rift down the middle and then circle areas of rooms instead of numbering individual rooms themselves.

That was part of the online Dungeon mag Dungeoncraft series:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dudc/20080213a

 

[Wik]

Riiight, which is why there's rules for determining the EL of groups of many monsters...

Well, be that as it may, the fact IS that 3e is designed with a "4 PCs vs. fewer bad guys" approach. It's even written in the description of what CR is. That's the design philosophy. And, if you look in those EL's, it really doesn't work well after six or so monsters are thrown in... and I think it even says so in the DMG.

I like my 3e, and I like 4e... they just have different design goals. I haven't run boss fights in 4e yet, so maybe 3e has better "boss fights", but I can tell you that 4e runs large fights much better than 3e ever will.

***

Now, onto the task at hand...

I'm really loving prepping encounters for 4e. Merric, have you found that it's a lot quicker statting things up in 4e? I wrote an entire 8 encounter adventure, with quests and skill challenges, in around two hours. With the drawing of maps, and the planning of possible detours, I spent perhaps four hours. And I was flipping through books in much of this time, because I had no idea about magical treasure or whatnot.

The treasure packets are a lame idea, on the core, but they do work. Just do what I do... break them up a bit more. For example, packet #7 for Party level one is 120 gp. You can break that up into silver pieces, or make it one object of art, or whatever. Or, you can break that up into twelve rewards, each of 10 gp. I found that if I took one packet, broke it up into shards, I was able to give each little mook a few gold pieces for the PCs to take - much like they would in earlier editions.

My big problem right now is minor quests. I get that each PCs is supposed to get one, but since the group gets the reward, minor quests seem like silly innovations. Essentially, they work as "Get to room 12 and kill the bad guy there"... which is something they'd do anyways. I'm still trying to figure out a way to play with minor quests, though I still need to think of a few extra ones right now. I have an idea involving a "minor quest" being an XP reward for each hostage rescued, but I dunno if that really fits the bill.