Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 5639352" data-attributes="member: 54707">To me what occupies a room should be more a  function of the building/design itself rather than being dictated by a version  of the game.   To me it's a matter of what is the locale used  for, who occupies it, how much space do they need, did they build this for their  own purposes, squat in an empty space, or take it from someone else? Who owns  it, why, and how many owners are there and what is its actual function, to me  that tells me if the room will be empty or not, and how many empty areas there  are in a particular space or area.   So to me that's how I figure about empty rooms. Of  course you've always got the Tomb of Horrors empty versus really  empty.   If a room is truly empty I'm not sure there's a  lot that can be done with it, unless it seems strategically located around or in  a set of rooms that are far more dangerous, challenging, or  menacing.   I've used a lot of seemingly empty rooms to good  effect. And of course just because a room is empty doesn't mean it can't seem  menacing to the players. If described in a certain way or if it is located near  a dangerous area.   A few of the best "empty rooms" I've designed or  played in (not all were "empty" empty:   There was a room that everyone in the party saw as  completely empty except for a thief who kept seeing mirrors on the walls. But  instead of seeing his own reflection or that of his party he kept seeing another  party and what they were doing (which was creepy). Unknown to the first party  there was a competitor party in the same dungeon. But the first party was  spooked by the one guy who kept seeing things through otherwise invisible  mirrors and I never explained why he saw what he saw or why.    There was an empty room that was really a  Tesseract.   An empty room that was a gimbal.   An empty room in which various sounds could be  heard and odors smelled but other than that nothing happened. Yet players often  think stuff like that must mean something.   An empty room in which they kept hearing ticking  but could never discover the source.   A room with some dinosaur bones that convinced  them there was a dragon nearby. There wasn't, but one of the occupants had  discovered the bones while excavating another area.   A room that was empty but if you walked to the  very center of it you could see through every wall and into other parts of the  dungeon.   A room with tapestries in it that if you stared at  them awhile would animate and play out different scenes, and if you pulled a  thread from the tapestry it would start to weave itself into a new tapestry with  monstrous figures that would animate and leap from the tapestry and attack the  party.   And an empty room that if the lights were  extinguished it acted like a planetarium and star chart room (which allowed them  to chart their position).    </blockquote>

Verification