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<blockquote data-quote="Altin" data-source="post: 207470" data-attributes="member: 3107">I'm curious whether anyone here has come across the problem of keeping side-based adventures (ie. games in the dungeoncrawl mould in that the action is driven by the PC's exploration of a location of some description) from becoming monotonous exercises of 'listen at door, search door for traps, open door, fight baddie (if any), get loot (if any), rinse, repeat'.Perhaps some context is in order. I am currently running a fairly dark, mood-driven Ravenloft game (I wouldn't go so far as to say that it is consistently a horror game but it leans in that general direction) which has, until now, mostly been driven by me throwing various events at the group and having them respond to or cope with the situation. This gives me a good deal of control over the level of tension in the game - if this seem to be dragging, I just throw the next thing in my 'sequence' at them.However, soon they're going to be going into what is essentially a dungeon (in actual fact the site a group of linked wizard's towers where something has gone wrong - bit like in the System Shock games or Aliens 2 - but which contain information they need) and I'm not sure how to keep the tension up to the level which I am used to having with plot-driven games. In my previous experiences with dungeons bigger than a few rooms, they tend to feature long periods of ho-hum exploration followed by short bursts of intense action (when traps are inadvertently triggered or monsters encountered). Has anyone got any tips on how to make them more engaging and immediate without making the whole thing into a massive death-trap? Yours, &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Altin</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Altin, post: 207470, member: 3107"] I'm curious whether anyone here has come across the problem of keeping side-based adventures (ie. games in the dungeoncrawl mould in that the action is driven by the PC's exploration of a location of some description) from becoming monotonous exercises of 'listen at door, search door for traps, open door, fight baddie (if any), get loot (if any), rinse, repeat'. Perhaps some context is in order. I am currently running a fairly dark, mood-driven Ravenloft game (I wouldn't go so far as to say that it is consistently a horror game but it leans in that general direction) which has, until now, mostly been driven by me throwing various events at the group and having them respond to or cope with the situation. This gives me a good deal of control over the level of tension in the game - if this seem to be dragging, I just throw the next thing in my 'sequence' at them. However, soon they're going to be going into what is essentially a dungeon (in actual fact the site a group of linked wizard's towers where something has gone wrong - bit like in the System Shock games or Aliens 2 - but which contain information they need) and I'm not sure how to keep the tension up to the level which I am used to having with plot-driven games. In my previous experiences with dungeons bigger than a few rooms, they tend to feature long periods of ho-hum exploration followed by short bursts of intense action (when traps are inadvertently triggered or monsters encountered). Has anyone got any tips on how to make them more engaging and immediate without making the whole thing into a massive death-trap? Yours, Altin [/QUOTE]

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