NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5003487" data-attributes="member: 4937">I don't think there is any single right answer here.  The solution I'd adopt would depend on what I envisioned in my head when I imagined what said ruined city looked like.  Approach #1: Large basically intact cyclopian city.  This is a 'wonder of wonders' sort of situation, and probably CR 20ish and deserving of some detail.  There might be only one such legendary city on the whole game world.  I'd make a broad level street map.  Then I'd treat this as several smaller dungeons of 9-40 rooms keyed to areas of interest on the map.  Then I'd make a half dozen stock layouts that could be inverted, reversed, kludged together and use them for the majority of buildings.  Then I'd make a wandering encounter table.  This is a major undertaking, and would probably take me serveral months.  Play time would probably be equally long.  You could get lost in something of this size for a long time.  I'd never improv a location of this importance, although you could do it if the players couldn't fly simply by stalling them out in the emmensity of the place until you had time to create prepared locations between sessions.Approach #2: Largely ruined large city.  Lots of places get swallowed by time.  As above, except that I wouldn't need a street map.  Instead I'd make a 'random find' table indicating minor hazards and points of interest encountered in the course of movement between major locations.  Also, major locations would probably shrink to 3-15 rooms each.  This would probably take me several weeks of prep, and would probably be the hardest to improv because the players have so much freedom and can move right to the points of interest.  If improving, I'd probably try to delay the players by making the city in an heavily overgrown jungle or in a kelp forest (underwater) so that you could literally be standing right next to something and not see it.Approach #3: There was a city here once.  As #2, but I wouldn't need the dungeons because there aren't really any buildings left.  Most encounters are effectively outlines of rooms or former buildings or simply points in the wilderness with ruins jutting out.  I'd predetermine the location of several points of interest and random up the rest.  I could do this in a week or less.  Depending on how clear my ideas where about this city, I could improv this if I had to because the locations are fairly simple and are produced from fairly simple ideas: a statue, the sanctum of a ruined temple, a fallen obelisk, a king's mausoleum, something lairing in the ruins, etc.Approach #4: Small largely ruined city.  As #2 except there is no space between the dungeons so I wouldn't need the street map because the dungeons are the street map.  This is basicly a single dungeon of somewhat large size which doesn't have a roof.  It would probably take me a couple of weeks.  I could improv this only be being pretty random about it.</blockquote>

Verification