Keying and how we all do it?

[Gus L]

As a reader, I really appreciate thoughtfulness when someone takes what is dense and attempts through the choices they make in representing that information, to make it easier to parse for most readers (e.g. relationships/faction map, large maps broken up into smaller maps, a chapter on factions, their motivations, key figures, their lairs, how they could respond to something, random tables with intersections at their heart, etc).

Absolutely! I am big on these things as well and think they help, but they do increase length and complexity as well - still a good trade off for complex things like a mega dungeon. For simple things and like a 10 room lair with 2 factions though they aren't worth it.

Something like a mega dungeon or a campaign book would need to employ a variety of different tools or styles to get there I'd imagine; its format would have to be bespoke for each project. I couldn't imagine for example, writing an entire mega dungeon in rote bullet points, it'd get boring for me, and hard to look at! :3

Also this 100% - What works for one adventure is bad for another. Like one of my complaints about Halls of the Blood King is that it's using dungeon crawl formatted keying (focused on space and exploration) for a vampire's palace (the archetypical social situation dungeon focused on relationships/RP). Still think it's a fun adventure, but it would be better with a different style of keys.

 

[Jack Daniel]

Here's how I go about keying a basic dungeon-crawling level:

« Google Drive Link »

This is what I do with pretty much all of my dungeon-levels, no matter how complex or interconnected.